John Elmsly

John Elmsly was born in Auckland on 1 July 1952. A childhood which included a dozen or so primary schools in Auckland, Melbourne, Blenheim, and the Hutt Valley managed to include music study on the piano with James Noice but his serious composing began at secondary school, with much encouragement from Laughton Pattrick (then HOD Music at Upper Hutt College). The major part of this was five years of participation in the creation of school musicals and other works for school orchestras and choirs. Later theatrical work included incidental music for a production of The Royal Pardon performed by the Heretaunga Players and later Unity Theatre in Wellington.

At Victoria University study in science (with a major in mathematics) was gradually replaced by music study, including piano performance study with Barry Margan who was then widely known for his touring with Music Players 70 and similar groups, and composition study with David Farquhar. Significant performances took place at the summer schools of Cambridge and Kerikeri. His study at VUW with such vital lecturers as Jenny McLeod, Margaret Nielsen, Gordon Burt and Ross Harris was vital in forming his deep and lasting interest in contemporary music and its composition. First work with electronic music was undertaken with Douglas Lilburn in 1975. The same year he took up a Belgian postgraduate scholarship and began study at the Muziekconservatorium van Brussel, taking a First Prize in Composition in 1977, and undertaking further study with Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur and Philippe Boesmans in Liège. Throughout the period in Belgium he was also carrying out electroacoustic composition at the studios of IPEM in Ghent, under the mentorship of Lucien Goethals. Several pieces produced there were broadcast by BRT3.

Part-time teaching and composing in London was to follow, including classroom teaching in various inner city schools and a year running the music department at Queens College. In 1983 undertook a film music summer course at Dartington with Richard Rodney Bennett and Robert Saxton, and returned permanently to NZ to take up a teaching position at the University of Auckland in 1984.

An early Auckland performance was the Passacaglia of which William Dart wrote in ‘The Listener’: ‘to appreciate the calligraphic neatness and precision of Elmsly’s written score is to understand the nature of the music itself. The lucidity never wavers: all contours are perfectly gauged. There is a wealth of characteristic ideas that register vividly on first hearing, from the trills and glissandi of the first bars through the ‘alla chitarra’ section of pizzicato strings to a persistent repeated note motive for the pianist….in the central Fugue,…one is easily beguiled by the stealth and subtlety with which the cool four-part texture is built up and sustained’.

Thus began a long association with Auckland based performers, who commissioned the Dialogue series of five works (Uwe Grodd, Peter Scholes and David Guerin, David Jenkins and Christine Cuming, Nicola Averill and Jonathan Baker, Miranda Adams and Ingrid Wahlberg). Wendy Dixon and Christine Cuming commissioned On Home Ground for soprano and piano, and piano music was commissioned or premiered by Christine Cuming, David Guerin, Bryan Sayer and Ingrid Wahlberg The Auckland Philharmonia publicly performed or recorded on CD Neither From Nor Towards, Cello Symphony (Ribbonwood CD), Pacific Hockets (ODE CD), Intoit, Resound (Atoll CD), Metamorphoses and White Feathers, as well as workshop readings of Sinfonietta, and Champs de Cloches. In national tours Bridget Douglas of the NZSO premiered Response for flute and orchestra, and in 2017 Gisborne competition winner Singaporean violinist Jun Hong Loh premiered the Concerto for violin and orchestra with Orchestra Wellington.

In his thirty years at the University of Auckland (1984-2014) performance was also part of John’s work: he conducted the premiere of Gillian Whitehead’s The Pirate Moon and two NZ performances of Out of this Nettle Danger, and many other NZ composers featured in the regular programmes, often broadcast, of the Karlheinz Company. He has also performed frequently as pianist, harpsichordist, synthesist, flautist, and baroque flautist, and conducted various groups including the Ensemble Philharmonia and St Matthews Chamber Orchestra.

In 2014 he retired from the University of Auckland School of Music as Associate-Professor and head of composition, director of the Karlheinz Company contemporary music ensemble (which he has conducted in many broadcast recitals as well as performing on piano, synthesiser and flute) and director of the electronic music studio. He was the Acting-Dean of Faculty of Music 1997; Assistant-Dean, Faculty of Arts 1999; Acting Head of School of Music, 2000. Since 2014 he has been an Honorary Associate-Professor of the School of Music.

Gestauqua (for brass quintet and tape) represented NZ at the 1990 Paris Rostrum, and in 1992 Elmsly won the Philip Neill Memorial Prize from the University of Otago. He was President of Composers' Association of NZ from 1996 to 1999; Committee member from 1995 to 2012; and elected to the Executive Committee of Asian Composers' League from 1997 to 2002. In 2014 he was awarded the CANZ Citation for services to New Zealand music.

From 2015 to 2016 he was Jack Richards /Creative New Zealand Composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music, and he was Composer in residence for Orchestra Wellington in 2017.

His music has been performed in concerts and festivals in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Philippines, Spain, Thailand, US, UK. Works appear on a number of CDs, some appearing in the Naxos Music Library. Rattle released his String Quartet in Three Movements performed by the Jade Quartet, and Naxos released his Suite for solo guitar on a CD of NZ guitar music by Gunter Herbig.