Chris Watson has been filming and editing performances of music by Aotearoa New Zealand composers for SOUNZ Films since 2013, amassing a collection of over 1600 films published on SOUNZ channels. In this article, he takes a deep dive into the filming process, bringing us with him on a busy run of events around the motu during September and October. It’s a rare insight into the depth and breadth of music-making in this country, from someone with unique access to the art form.
SOUNZ Films is a project hosted by SOUNZ in partnership with RNZ Concert, funded by NZ On Air.
There’s a black mass of jottings populating September and October on my wall calendar, very much at odds with the more even spread of events scheduled for other times of the year. 27 concerts to film, 68 pieces of music by 54 New Zealand composers in eight centres and 15 venues. I’ll capture a little more than half of 2024’s musical offerings in these 48 days. There will be 16 flights flown and 18 Uber rides ridden; and a shamefully large ball of single-use gaffer tape created by the end of it all.
SEPTEMBER 4-6
It starts at home in Wellington, with a new take on something very familiar: the CANZ Composers Workshop, held not in its traditional Nelson setting (or even at its more recent Christchurch base) but at the Michael Fowler Centre, with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as co-host.
This has come about through the energy and organisational acumen of Keith Moss, this year’s elected curator. CANZ and the NZSO have offered composers the chance to write for a set range of large ensembles. In the tradition of the Workshop, the pieces are rehearsed with the composers and a composer-mentor in attendance, with interaction encouraged.
The Workshop holds a special place for me as a composer and also as a filmmaker. It wasn’t until I plucked up the courage to attend one of these (as a reasonably long-in-the-tooth masters student) that my composing began to take off. In many subsequent years of attendance I witnessed the Workshop’s importance to other composers just taking those tentative first steps. And it was at the 2008 Workshop that I made my first forays into filmmaking, shooting what would become a 42-minute documentary about the institution (a pretty rough but very earnest document, narrated with great difficulty shortly after I’d had some major dental surgery). So I’m really pleased to see the thing alive, thriving, evolving and still providing that nurturing spark to the next generations of New Zealand composers.
I don’t get to see all of the works rehearsed on the main concert stage (rehearsals are taking place concurrently in rooms around the venue), so I will film many of the pieces without the benefit of having sighted them previously. But Keith’s excellent schedule and extra bits of info gleaned from audio engineer/producer John Neill mean there are very few surprises once we get rolling.
It’s an ambitious programme: 17 works over three days. There are many composer names I’m unfamiliar with (as well as a few veterans, using the opportunity to find their way back to the concert music paradigm). The standard is incredibly high, with works by Mallory Elmo, Cameron Monteith, Ewan Clark and Chongwen Wayne Gao really grabbing my attention.
SEPTEMBER 7
The next day I have a visit with an old friend: the Auckland Chamber Orchestra. A group that had years of great momentum stalled by Covid, which is now emerging post-pandemic with a concert-to-concert format rather than a season built far in advance, relying on a faithful audience to fill the Raye Freedman Centre, and the charisma of its leader Peter Scholes. I’m really glad to reconnect with the ACO for this offering of wind quintets, including excellent works by New Zealanders Ross Harris, Leonie Holmes and Anthony Young.
I know the camera-friendly areas of the Raye Freedman Centre well: there’s plenty of space to install one-shot-per-player cameras plus left, right and centre wide shots. Peter (himself on clarinets) always brings together excellent players and tonight is no exception. You get the strong feeling that the players are there for Peter; it’s not just another gig. They deliver a survey of wind quintets that demonstrate this ensemble’s expressive capabilities. This medium’s reputation as blown instruments’ poor cousin to the string quartet is undeserved.
SEPTEMBER 12
I next visit Ōtautahi and The Piano. Management has recently been taken over by Marcus Norman, who I’ve worked with previously on projects with the New Zealand String Quartet. Marcus is clearly energised by his new role, and we talk about the possibility of further collaborations as I set up. With each visit I’ve been getting a sense of Christchurch’s gathering strength and I want to do more work there.
I’ll be filming a Chamber Music New Zealand/Christopher’s Classics concert performed by flutist Hannah Darroch and percussionist Justin DeHart. Hannah has recently become my new boss at SOUNZ, so coming away with a good result will be ideal. She and Justin have been touring a programme of cutting-edge repertoire (both duo and solo), including Gareth Farr’s seminal Kembang Suling, Helen Fisher’s haunting and powerful Te Tangi a te Matui, and a meaning-laden new work by US-based Celeste Oram, notes on the nocturne tradition. I’d chatted with the critic William Dart about the programme at the ACO concert; he had travelled from Auckland to Cambridge to see the concert there. He was effusive in his praise and had been pleased to be exposed to challenging new repertoire, something not always evident in New Zealand programming.
I’ve pre-arranged with Chamber Music New Zealand to have seats held for me on either side of the space and Marcus and his excellent staff identify additional locations for camera placement, informed by the latest ticket sale numbers. The Piano, along with the University of Waikato’s Gallagher Concert Chamber, is the envy of Wellington, Auckland and, perhaps Dunedin, where similarly-sized concert chambers with excellent acoustics are sorely lacking. Wellington-based sound engineer Darryl Stack, an excellent human being with some of the best ears around, is there to record the audio for RNZ Concert, assisted by Alex Harmer.
Hannah and Justin are world-class musicians, their playing of this detailed and demanding music interspersed with at-ease chat-chit that provides context, demystifies the challenging works, adds warmth and makes the event a total experience. I almost miss the beginning of Hannah’s exceptional rendition of Helen Fisher’s Te Tangi a te Matui at the beginning of the second half: a camera battery that had previously been indicating good health had suddenly decided to display only minutes of life remaining and I have to blag a 50 cent coin from an audience member in order to unscrew the relevant camera from its tripod and replace the battery. Even in minimal light I’ve become pretty good at speedy assembly/disassembly of my rag-tag selection of tripods and attachment systems (assuming I’ve remembered to have a 50 cent coin on my person).
SEPTEMBER 17-18
I have four days at home before the next trip, a double-header on consecutive nights in Auckland, both in the Concert Chamber of the Auckland Town Hall. Chamber Music New Zealand has brought out Calefax, a reed quintet from The Netherlands for a nine-concert tour. I’m there for their world premiere of Rosie Langabeer’s Chamber Music New Zealand commission as the mountain folds itself to sleep, very much not the mere “two chord improvisation” sold to me by the composer before the concert, but rather a gorgeously plaintive and colouristic blues number that suits this ensemble perfectly.
It’s a near-full house so I’ve squeezed nests of cameras against the walls of the first row of the gallery, occupying the left nest myself. The distinguished duo of Tim Dodd (producer) and Adrian Hollay (sound engineer) are recording audio for RNZ Concert - it’s always good to see the Auckland team.
Calefax concludes its concert with an arrangement of Gershwin’s An American in Paris, played from memory and with a complex dance/movement choreography. My resistance to cliché proves limited and I leave with a smile on my face.
The next morning I’m back in the Concert Chamber to catch up with NZTrio, a mainstay of SOUNZ Films, having appeared in films of 71 works by New Zealand composers, first filmed in 2013. Amalia Hall (violin), Ashley Brown (cello) and Somi Kim (piano) are presenting Reuben Jelleyman’s delicious Büchlein Reimaginings, in which elements of JS Bach chorales are recast in a contemporary mould. It’s compelling stuff and hangs in the air, timelessly. By chance I’m seated next to Amalia on the flight back to Wellington the next morning and we talk about the detail in Reuben’s score and his command of gesture, though in a far less nerdy way than this suggests.
SEPTEMBER 21
I’m back in Wellington for a concert of The Tudor Consort, presenting music by Ross Harris, David Hamilton, Takerei Komene, Leonie Holmes and the world premiere of David Griffiths’s O Nata Lux at Wellington’s Cathedral of St Paul. I’m reasonably familiar with this space, having most memorably filmed Ross Harris and Horomona Horo’s Requiem for the Fallen here way back in 2014, but when I enter the Cathedral it’s far more cavernous than I remember. When I relate this to the choir’s Musical Director (and the Cathedral’s Director of Music) Michael Stewart, he makes a resigned gesture indicating that lots of people make this remark.
I like music for voice, but I find it really hard to film singers, and I can’t quite articulate why. The problem might be that they - their bodies - are the instrument. There’s nothing being held, struck, scraped, blown…the sound emanates magically from their flesh, the mechanics of it hidden away from view. Perhaps it would be less mysterious if I could sing (I mean, not just vaguely hold a tune) and knew the sensation of beautifully crafted pitches coming from within me.
The Tudor Consort is a treasure, the music is compelling, and I do my best to capture the singers from nests of cameras positioned up against the giant pillars of the cathedral. Darryl Stack and David McCaw capture the RNZ Concert audio. It’s heartwarming that David Griffiths’ daughter Anna Langworthy is in the choir and to see her present her Dad with flowers after his successful premiere.
SEPTEMBER 22
The next morning I’m heading back to Auckland. I’ve been covering the New Zealand composition performances of the Auckland Youth Orchestra for some years now, this having been set in motion by the orchestra’s excellent Treasurer, Helen Lewis, one of those behind-the-scenes heroes, the extent of whose work will probably never be fully known.
The AYO typically stages the final concert of any given touring programme at the Auckland Town Hall, giant red polystyrene “A-Y-O” letters placed at the rear of the stage, the post-concert centrepiece for musician group selfies. I sense that their conductor, Antun Poljanich, respects the young players’ abilities, seeks to challenge them with tough repertoire, and treats them like the professional musicians that many will no doubt become. While still a fun environment, this ensemble has serious intent, and they sound great. There’s something about the energy of youth orchestras that professional orchestras - through no fault of their own - can’t emulate.
The place is packed with the families of the players, the well-wishing, energy and curiosity more than making up for the unfortunate array of extraneous noises that do tend to end up on the sound recording. On the mics is Franco Viganoni, gregarious Italian personality and a fixture at many Auckland concerts, generously lending his time and expertise as a service to the music community, something that I appreciate greatly. I look forward to seeing Franco and his lovely wife Rosie and enjoy our pre and post-concert chats.
We hear Jenny McLeod’s Rock Concerto, with the excellent Charles Sang at the piano. I’m pleased to get what I assume is the first visual recording of this work, an attempt by Jenny to bring two musical idioms that were of great importance to her closer together.
SEPTEMBER 29
By chance, I’ll be making back-to-back recordings of compositions by Jenny McLeod. The Martinborough Music Festival has become a regular gig for me in recent years and in 2024 it manifests as a live recording (rather than the special post-festival recording with no audience that I’ve attended for the past two years). I enjoy the early morning drive over the Remutaka hill road to the Wairarapa; it’s a nice change from the dreary routine of processing through Wellington Airport.
Scilla Askew ran SOUNZ when I first worked there as a student (as a once-a-week cleaner and filer of scores in the early 2000s) and she later hired me to run the Resound project (which would eventually morph into SOUNZ Films). She’s a trustee of the Festival and my point of contact for this recording, and it’s great to catch up with her as I assemble my gear. RNZ sound engineer/producer David Houston has been recording at the MMF for the last few days (conveniently, he’s a local) and there are jokes about the need to patch a recording in which a musician has let rip with an expletive captured on the mics.
The McLeod in question is Jenny’s Clouds, a piano trio that slipped through my fingers some years back when it was scheduled for performance by NZTrio, but fell victim to Covid. Its programme note is an original poem by the composer, concluding,
calmo, agitato
with a bit of cirro-
cumulo-nimbo-stratus
thrown in
more like
McLeody sort of clouds …
It’s being performed by NZSO stalwart Donald Armstrong (violin), the Serbian/Melburnian Svetlana Bogosavljevic (cello) and Finn Paavali Jumppanen (piano). As with the AWE Festival (see below), it’s always exciting to hear unfamiliar international musicians, Martinborough having benefited greatly from the networking of its co-Artistic Director Wilma Smith.
The Martinborough Town Hall is sold out, and I’m unable to position cameras at ground level. Fortunately, there’s a publicly off-limits gallery accessed via a ladder that I can set up in, where I’m kept company by a local photographer.
SEPTEMBER 30
The next day I’m back to Auckland, where I’ve been asked to film the premiere of Cyan Beyond Blue 青出于蓝, a work for guzheng and orchestra by University of Auckland School of Music PhD candidate Lin Zheng. The composer takes the role of guzheng soloist and is backed by the University Orchestra (conducted by Jono Palmer).
We’re at St Matthew’s in the City, one of the more beautiful venues I occasionally make it to, jarringly situated across the road from the casino. It’s good to see John Kim, the Music School’s technician and an excellent sound recordist. After several failed attempts to position cameras at ground level I settle instead for a nest located in the pulpit (percussion x3 and conductor) and a bunch of cameras (plus me) in the gallery. It turns out that the place is full to overflowing and I feel bad that me and my cameras occupy an entire pew while some of the audience are perched on stairs. Filming music involves being physically located on the audience side of the action, and I experience a certain anxiety when the expensive gear that’s entrusted to me is in close proximity to concert-goers. Will they generate vibrations, absent-mindedly flip the switch on a camera plugged into the mains, or fall over something and get injured? None of these things ever happen, but the anxiety remains.
Lin’s piece is bold and sweeping and makes an impression. Her playing is accomplished and the orchestra is excellent. I tell its director Mark Bennett that I’d like to film the University Orchestra some more if they can programme further New Zealand music.
OCTOBER 3
Wellington’s Pyramid Club stands in stark contrast to St Matthew’s in the City. It’s a small, endearingly grimy venue situated above an antique store on Taranaki Street, a much-loved home to the noise artists and improvisers who do outsized things with funding levels that make the budgets of other poorly-funded operations in the ‘classical’ area seem lavish.
I’m here to film Moth Quartet, a string quartet made up of the accomplished composers Salina Fisher, Tristan Carter, Elliot Vaughan and Nicholas Denton Protsack. They take to the stage sans music stands and scores and what follows is a revelation. It’s music borne of a great compositional and performative depth of knowledge. Moth’s improvisations unfold with each composer-musician contributing well-chosen shards from long-internalised catalogues of avant-garde string gestures. It adds up to a musical experience that only really good composers who happen to be really good musicians could produce: music that flows with an energy and organisational clarity that renders the need for a centralised score kind of redundant. In a perverse way it’s disheartening for someone like me who - and yes, it’s been a long time now - writes lines and dots: why would a composer bother to codify this kind of music if this group can manufacture it in such a convincing manner in situ?
I’m massively impressed and hope I get further chances to film them.
OCTOBER 4
My next date documents a flagship SOUNZ project, produced in partnership with the NZSO and RNZ Concert: the NZ Composer Sessions. It’s central to the mahi of my colleague Sarah Ballard, our Projects Coordinator: inviting the submission of scores from composers, assembling a panel to select the works that will be performed, and working through the process of getting the successful scores in front of the players of the NZSO on the stage of the Michael Fowler Centre.
Filming this project is easier said than done. The problem is that each successive piece the orchestra plays has a slightly different instrumentation, with players added or subtracted from the stage. (The array of percussion is mind boggling, as if the percussionists have completely emptied their store of instruments and set them up at the rear of the stage). As there is no time for me to reset my cameras (aside from the few that are right in front of me) between works, I have to come up with a compromise camera setup that allows me to capture all of the pieces more-or-less successfully. The “more-or-less” part is vexing, but I have to accept that, on the visual side, it’s just me making the pictures.
The music is impressive. I like to think that I’m fairly alongside who’s hot in New Zealand composition, but composers George Smith and Maddy Parkins-Craig are a broadside. Technically assured and with plenty to say, their works are excellent…how did I miss them previously? Names that I do know are Julian Kirgan-Báez, Sai Natarajan and Briar Prastiti and I go in with strong expectations; they don’t disappoint. Each of these composers has a style that they are working hard, producing music of confidence and with direction. The old guard, if this isn’t an insulting term, of Chris Gendall and Louise Webster, deliver fantastic pieces, each a concerto. Chris’s pairing with trombonist David Bremner is spellbinding and Louise’s writing for the oboe of Robert Orr unfolds without hurry, building a devastating argument.
But the work that floors me is Jack Bewley’s Crustacean Lobotomy. I had strong memories of filming an audacious work by Jack for a large contingent of brass players, complete with choreography in the Adam Concert Room some years back, but this piece reveals an even more ambitious intent. Is the spirit of Schnittke alive and living in Wellington?
It’s easy to overlook the conductor of these sessions, Hamish McKeich. If it sometimes feels like he’s just part of the furniture, that’s his fault: he is prolific like few others in the performance of New Zealand repertoire, be it for 175 East (back in the day), Stroma, or this, the biggest band in the land. The works we hear at the Sessions are successfully brought to life in the first instance by Hamish’s preparation of the scores, his expert navigation of the rehearsals, and his impeccable but relaxed execution when it comes time to perform. That he continues to deliver at this level, these days restricted to the use of just his left arm, is hard to process.
OCTOBER 5-8 and 11-14
At the World’s Edge Festival is the brainchild of violinists Justine Cormack and Ben Baker: an annual chamber music festival set amongst the mountains, lakes and rivers of Central Otago, now in its fourth year. It’s my third visit and it hasn’t taken long for AWE to become my favourite gig of the year, for the scenery, the hospitality, the music, and the people.
The Festival is centred around two weekends so I take two bites at it over two trips, missing only one concert (but getting all of the New Zealand music). This year the Composer in Residence is Eve de Castro-Robinson, someone whose music always does something extra-musically surprising and whose thinking about music and the arts I value; I enjoy catching up with her over conversations grabbed around rehearsals and performances. I film eight of Eve’s works, including the premieres of Festival commissions Earth’s Eye and Bird-sung sky. There are also excellent pieces by the Emerging Composer, Estella Wallace, former Composers in Residence Gareth Farr, Victoria Kelly and Salina Fisher, as well as Douglas Lilburn (a very refreshing rendition of Sings Harry by Deborah Wai Kapohe and her guitar).
It’s a stellar line-up of mostly international guest artists and I’m captivated by each of them at different moments throughout my six days at AWE. It’s unlikely that New Zealand audiences would ever get to see these musicians on New Zealand concert stages were it not for the mana and networking of Ben and Justine.
RNZ Concert has sent Adrian Hollay to record the sound. Adrian is very good at his job and is outstanding company. There is much comparing of notes regarding bass guitars (I’ve recently started learning; he’s a veteran multi-instrumentalist) and discussion about his small farming endeavours.
Piano technician Matt Pestle is also at AWE and is super busy looking after Te Atamira’s Yamaha and Bannockburn’s Boston, as well as stage managing the ten ticketed concerts and numerous free events (that’s an awful lot of positioning of music stands and seats). It’s good to get to know him better, and later in the month I’ll joke with his partner, pianist Sarah Watkins, that I’ve spent more time with him recently than she has.
There’s an easy camaraderie that forms with the talented people working not directly with the music, but in the service of documenting what happens, or enabling things to be where they need to be at the right time: the sound and stage people, the photographers, the lighting contractors. These people are on deck hours before the first rehearsal and are still hard at work once the concert has finished, tearing up metres of gaffer tape, packing down equipment into cases, deconstructing a temporary stage or resetting it for tomorrow’s early rehearsal.
The action starts at Queenstown’s Te Atamira, a venue that generously accommodates the work of the Festival musicians, while still functioning as a community arts centre during the day. So the rehearsals are punctuated by the laughter of kids attending holiday art programmes and the surprised expressions of people wandering in to check out the art exhibits and stumbling instead upon world-class chamber musicians doing their thing. This year a site-specific mural by John Reynolds, What the Mountain Said, covers the wall behind the players and becomes an integral part of the films I shoot (last year it was stunning large-format portraits by Abhi Chinniah).
The time spent in the closed-in (and sometimes tense) environment of rehearsals contrasts with breaks spent walking down to the Kawarau River, the Remarkables towering above it. We’re accommodated at a hotel just a short walk from Te Atamira, boasting several rating stars more than the places I normally crash at while on the road. One night I’m up late, post-concert, backing up hundreds of gigabytes from my cameras to hard drives and recharging batteries and I miss a post on the AWE group Whatsapp alerting everyone to the aurora playing out in the Otago skies.
We have a day at Coronation Hall in Bannockburn for two concerts showcasing the talents - and stamina - of English clarinettist Julian Bliss (more on him later). On first sighting the hall looks impossibly small, but it pulls off its task of hosting us and two packed houses, a wine country Tardis.
On my second visit we finish up in Queenstown and head over the Crown Range to Wānaka and the impossibly gorgeous Rippon Hall. The stage is backed by huge windows opening out to mountains and lake (and that perfect little island) beyond. Stunning as it is, the natural backlighting plays havoc with my cameras. Thankfully, last year, a pull-down screen was introduced to mitigate these effects, and this year the artificial lighting provided by TomTom Productions makes for a huge improvement. The scenic outlook is a huge winner with the audience: Matt comments that he gets applause when he retracts the screen during intervals.
I commandeer the balcony at the rear of the hall as the main vantage for my cameras. It’s nice to be joined there during performances by festival artists not required on stage. Adrian has a makeshift setup in an office close by and the performer green room is immediately behind me, so I feel much more at the centre of the action than I usually am.
AWE is exhausting and enriching in equal measure; I’m both relieved when it’s over and immediately start counting the days until the next one. As I’m dropped at Queenstown Airport by Ben I ask about the schools programme that he, a number of the festival artists and all of the emerging artists are about to embark on, and he casually says that they will be performing education programmes at 14 local schools to over 2000 students. My festival is over, but theirs has quite a few concerts to go.
OCTOBER 16
Marcus Miller is in town for the opening concert of the Wellington Jazz Festival and I make an effort to get along to hear him at a packed Wellington Opera House. Concert-going as a civilian is a rarity for me these days and I tend to privilege a quiet night at home over attending concerts that I’m not compelled to have cameras at. I spent my formative years sitting in concert halls as a listener, but now it feels weird being at a concert and not having to constantly monitor framing, focus and exposure and instead just being able to take in the music.
Mr Miller is superb, with a right thumb of steel, and his quintet is magnificent. I resolve to get out (without cameras) more often.
OCTOBER 17
The following day I’m at San Fran on Cuba Street for the Wellington Jazz Festival concert of Louisa Williamson, this year’s recipient of the Festival’s composer commission. I’ve not worked at San Fran before and am happy to find a good spot in front of the lighting desk for me and a nest of cameras, with views of the musicians at the back - keyboard, bass and drums - afforded by hanging clamp-mounted cameras upside-down from the lighting rigs. Steve Burridge is on duty for RNZ Concert.
Louisa’s The Chasm Where We Fall Into Each Other explores social and musical divides, resulting in a polystylistic and thought-provoking hour of music.
OCTOBER 19-20
A gig that’s been on my calendar for a very long time is the premiere of Ross Harris’s Clarinet Concerto with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and clarinettist Julian Bliss, conducted by young Australian Carlo Antonioli. I’ve been covering the CSO since its days of earthquake-enforced exile from the city, when it performed on a temporary stage set amongst the retired warplanes of the Air Force Museum of New Zealand in Wigram. For a number of concerts there I was allowed to occupy an authentic World War Two aircraft servicing platform, until both the museum staff and I became concerned about its rickety nature. Highlights of visits to Wigram include filming the first of Lyell Cresswell’s Piano Concertos and Eve de Castro Robinson’s Triple Clarinet Concerto.
The strengthened and refurbished Christchurch Town Hall is a marvel. From the first note, the clarity and balance is astonishing. I spend a lot of time in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre, which is ostensibly the same hall (same architects, very similar shape), but the slight differences in proportions and materials have somehow resulted in the acoustics of the Christchurch space being far superior. As a Wellingtonian this is vexing.
Ross’s Clarinet Concerto is one of his best works, alternately sweeping and soaring, with signature Harris dances and chorales. Having seen what Julian Bliss was capable of at AWE, I’m not surprised by how completely at ease he looks as he motors through the score, deploying circular breathing as if it’s taught on day one of clarinet school.
After the dress rehearsal I head to the vibrant Riverside Market with Ross for a drink. He’s a dear friend and my former teacher, and any time spent with him is highly valued.
Back at the Town Hall at the intermission I speak with Alex van den Broek, composer and, more recently, the producer of an excellent YouTube channel analysing the music of Gil Evans. And when the music is finished it’s a great surprise to see Jane Hebberd - friend, former flatmate and composer (on a long hiatus, like me) - as I pack down my kit.
It’s a 5am start the following morning to jet directly to Auckland in time for a day of rehearsals ahead of the Auckland Chamber Orchestra’s Diversions programme. Peter Scholes has crafted an eclectic programme of solos, duos and trios by Chris Adams, Claire Scholes, John Rimmer (who I had run into at Christchurch Airport the previous day), Gemma Peacocke, Ben Hoadley, Chris O'Connor and John Elmsly (plus Nielsen and a Peter Scholes arrangement of a bonkers Bob Becker piece featuring the APO’s Steven Logan on xylophone). It’s good to catch up with Sarah Watkins, there to rehearse Chris Adams’s toy piano piece, Ben Hoadley, attending the rehearsal of his trio but flying back to Australia before the concert, and Mary Binney, a dear friend seen too little.
I come up with a plan to best capture the well-contained variations of instrumentation on camera and enjoy an early dinner in the sun with RNZ Concert’s Tim Dodd and Adrian Hollay at Galbraith’s.
It’s a fun concert, punctuated by Chris O’Connor’s Exploring Steve Reich's Clapping Music, the seminal rhythmic study rendered on spoons hit against the performer’s thighs, interwoven with improvisation. I sense the audience transitioning very quickly from thinking “what the hell is this?!” to “this is incredible!”
Amalia Hall is in the departure lounge at Auckland Airport, having driven down from an NZTrio concert in Warkworth and now heading to the capital for Orchestra Wellington duties with the RNZB. The connections are many: earlier today I filmed her brother, the cellist Callum Hall, performing a work by Gemma Peacocke, and in a month from now I’ll film the NZTrio programme Amalia has just performed in Warkworth (containing a new piece by Eva Bedggood).
Whereas on many (most?) of my trips I will just go about my business with minimal social interaction, an introvert in his element, this Christchurch/Auckland trip has been full of really nice encounters with friends and colleagues from across the composer-performer-recording spectrum.
OCTOBER 22
This intense period of work ends restoratively in the presence of the music of Ariana Tikao and Bob Bickerton, midway through their tour for Chamber Music New Zealand. It’s my first visit to Upper Hutt’s Gillies Group Theatre in the Whirinaki Whare Taonga complex and I’m impressed by the concert chamber, to the extent that I’d like to modify my above comments: the Wellington region does indeed have a small concert venue in the mould of The Piano and the Gallagher. I’m expertly and graciously hosted by venue technicians Peter Benner and Mike Duffy and will, in time, source sound from the venerable RNZ Concert duo of David McCaw and Darryl Stack (assisted by Zeb Morrow). I establish nests of cameras on the left and in the technical booth and operate a single camera from the right, alternating between close-ups of each musician.
Muriwai is the ingoa of Ariana and Bob’s duo, meaning the confluence of two rivers analogised musically by the convergence of Ariana’s taonga puoro and Bob’s background in Celtic music (though, of course, Bob is also a fine exponent of puoro).
In a short first half they speak of their collaboration and foreshadow the narrative that will drive the second half. This relates the Kāi Tahu creation story from the perspective of water, concluding with a huriawa, a call to action to take seriously our care for water. It means a lot to me to hear Ariana perform: she and I share Kāi Tahu heritage, with both of our whānau having connections with Wakaroa Pigeon Bay, one of the large harbours on the north side of Horomaka Banks Peninsula.
And then this busy period is over. There remain two day trips to Auckland, one to Dunedin and a further six events to cover in Wellington before the year is out. But these are spaced out more manageably and will, crucially, not involve any nights away from home. During these 48 days there’s been precious little time for editing - sustained time at my desk is now called for. The 7.2 terabytes of data captured will now be synced with RNZ’s world-class audio and whittled down into multi-camera edits, each chosen shot considered for timing, framing, rotation, saturation and exposure. Fitting visuals of the musical intent of each piece (hopefully) realised. When the composers and performers are happy with what I’ve made I’ll write text to accompany the releases on the SOUNZ Facebook and YouTube channels. And then my colleagues Leoné Venter and Jonathan Engle will expertly swing into action with publication, digital promotion, and cataloguing.
We will work hard, as we have done for years, to get this precious music into the ears of New Zealanders (and beyond), increasing awareness of the exceptional creativity of our composers and the dedication and artistry of our musicians, doing our bit to keep the whole fragile thing not merely going, but thriving. Each work that’s performed without microphones and cameras will simply fade over time in the memories of those who were in the room, but SOUNZ has the technological means of preservation, and can ensure that our music persists and reaches people, enriching their lives. I feel privileged to help make this happen.
Stay tuned to SOUNZ channels over the coming year to see the results of Chris’s many journeys. SOUNZ Films are available to view, 24/7 from anywhere in the world on our channels:
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