Work

Programme Note

Everyone of my generation remembers the ‘Goodnight Kiwi’ – the animation that used to signal the end of television for the night in the days when we only had two channels to choose from.

I remember the rare occasions I was allowed to stay up late enough to see the Goodnight Kiwi carry out his nightly duties. It was always way past my bedtime and therefore overwhelmingly exciting. But I always felt very melancholy afterwards. I would lie awake for hours thinking about the kiwi shutting down the power and climbing up to sleep in the sky. It seemed so final.

As I was composing this piece in 2004, my mother was approaching the end of a long illness and she and I were going through a process of looking through photographs, telling the stories that accompanied them and wondering what
lay ahead. It made me remember long summers, lawn-mowers, barbeques, pohutukawa trees at the beach and a time in life that wasn’t weighed down with responsibilities or fears for the future. This piece is an emotional landscape that tries to evoke that feeling of nostalgia, presenting childhood memories into which the future begins to creep.

I imagined my mother was setting off on the same journey as the kiwi… wandering through the building, shutting down the power and then climbing up to sleep in the sky. I wrote this piece for her.

Commissioned:

Commissioned by Stephen de Pledge

• Stephen De Pledge

Influences:

• Children/youth

Dedication:

Dedicated to the composer's mother

Funders:

• Creative New Zealand

Performance History

	23 Jan 2004	Premiered by Stephen De Pledge (piano) at Wigmore Hall, London 23 January 2004
		Stephen De Pledge
	30 Mar 2004	Performed by Stephen de Pledge (piano) at Helen Young Studio, Auckland for Radio New Zealand Concert
		Stephen De Pledge
	27 Feb 2008	Performed by Stephen De Pledge at the Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington, as part of the 2008 New Zealand International Arts Festival.
		Stephen De Pledge
	25 Aug 2010	Performed by Stephen De Pledge (piano) as part of the Dartington International Summer School at the Great Hall, in Dartington, England
		Stephen De Pledge
	01 Apr 2011	Performed by Stephen De Pledge on the ‘Good Morning’ show (TVNZ), in Auckland
		Stephen De Pledge
	06 Apr 2011	Performed by Stephen De Pledge (piano) at the Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber in Auckland, as part of the New Zealand International Piano Festival
		Stephen De Pledge
	04 Jul 2011	Performed by Stephen de Pledge (piano) at St Margaret’s Church Lothbury as part of the City of London Festival
		Stephen De Pledge
	22 Mar 2012	Performed by Stephen de Pledge at the University of Glasgow Concert Hall (22 March 2012) and at the University of Edinburgh Reid Concert Hall (23 March 2012), Scotland.
		Stephen De Pledge
	03 May 2012	Performed by William Green as part of the Auckland Public Library Thursday Lunchtime Concert Series.
		William Green