Whenua Pūoro | Land Music

Whenua Pūoro | Land Music

A Concert of Taiao Conscious New Music

Improvisations, and works by Cage, Wolff and Oliveros, for taonga pūoro, electronics, voices, wind instruments and stones.

Whānau friendly

Waged $15 | Unwaged $10 | Tamariki Free | Cash Only

With kind support from Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music

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Featuring:

A performance of two works for kōhatu / stones: Pauline Oliveros' Rock Piece and Christian Wolff's Stones by students from Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music led by Rob Thorne and Zac Argabrite.

John Cage's Litany for the Whale performed by St Mary's Director of Music, William McElwee and multimedia artist Olivia Webb.

Improvisations by taonga pūoro practitioner Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu), artist and veteran improviser Gerard Crewdson, and electroacoustic musician Noel Meek.

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Rob Thorne – Māori composer, performer, improvisor, collaborator, anthropologist and specialist Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu) is a diverse and original explorer in the evolving journey of taonga pūoro, fusing these ancient voices with modern sounds and technology. Thorne’s combined musical and academic experience and skills are multitudinal. A musician with over 25 years performance experience in bands and solo, predominantly within alternative rock, free noise, experimental, and improvisational sound art, his work since 2001 with traditional tonga pūoro has seen him intelligently blending the modern with the ancient.

Zak Argabrite is an American artist based in Whanganui-a-Tara working in music, art and technology, with an interest in how sound, performance, text, space, and light can relate to social/cultural ritual and an awareness of the people and things around us. They create pieces for performance and installation, inventing and building in a variety of mediums surrounding the concert and sound art domains including performance notation, instrument building and handmade electronics.

Gerard Crewdson – During a career spanning close on 40 years, Gerard Crewdson has developed a unique and dedicated artistic practice in the fields of music, installation, painting, sculpture, film making and illustration. With a history of work with theatre and musical groups, his artistic, theatrical and musical practices dovetail in a unique and dedicated personal history. Crewdson has as extensive history of collaborative work, beginning with the Braille Collective in the 1980s, more than a decade in Sydney making art and music, and in recent times in association with numerous Wellington musical groups.

Noel Meek is an improvising musician and composer based in Ōtautahi, working with electronic, electroacoustic and found instruments. His work in recent years has taken a turn towards the non-human world and towards engaging with te ao Māori in an effort to explore what music truly rooted in the whenua of Aotearoa might sound like. Meek contributes regularly to The Wire and other music publications. Through his record labels, End of the Alphabet Records and God in the Music, he has promoted underground music from Aotearoa and other unusual parts of the world through tapes, lathes and musicians’ publications.

Olivia Webb is an artist, musician and vocalist of Dutch-Pākehā descent, based in Ōtautahi. Her art practice uses performance, participation, video, sound and music to give voice to silent experiences and traditions that pulse through our daily lives. Olivia’s most recent artworks explore themes of cultural identity through participatory projects which foreground practices of listening.

Recent projects include Anthems of Belonging (Christchurch Art Gallery, 2021; The Dowse Art Museum, 2020; and St Paul St Gallery, 2019); Manawa Ora (Sustainable Development Goals Summit, 2018); Attunement (Toi Poneke, Wellington, 2017-2018; and NIME, Virginia USA, 2018); Untitled (Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke, 2017); Skull Acoustics (PSi#22, Melbourne, 2016); and Lapides Vivi (Edinburgh Art Festival, 2016).

William McElwee is in demand as a choral conductor and vocal coach, praised for his ability to get outstanding vocalism from choirs and to stretch them musically. He is Director of Music at St. Mary of the Angels Church, where he leads the St Mary of the Angels Choir and Schola Cantorum Youth Choir. He has recently returned from the United Kingdom, where he was Musical Director of the Collegium Singers (Taunton) and the Yeovil Chamber Choir, Assistant Musical Director of Budleigh Salterton Male Voice Choir, Organist at Holy Family Church Honiton, Deputy Choral Scholar at Exeter Cathedral and Buckfast Abbey, and Singing Teacher at The Gryphon School in Sherborne, while maintaining a private teaching studio.

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