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Work


Four New Zealand Bird Songs

for soprano and string orchestra

Year:  2014   ·  Duration:  15m

Year:  2014
Duration:  15m

Rod Biss
Composer

Composer:   Rod Biss

Films, Audio & Samples

Rod Biss discusses Four New...

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NZSO, Margaret Medlyn (soprano), Hamish McKeich (conductor), 2015 NZSO-RNZ Concert-SOUNZ Recordings.

Rod Biss: Four New Zealand ...

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Rod Biss: Four New Zealand ...

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Sample Score

Sample: pages 1 - 2 from each movement

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Borrow/Hire:

To borrow items or hire parts please email SOUNZ directly at info@sounz.org.nz.

About

It was the terrible plight of Tara-iti (New Zealand's Fairy Tern) with just 40 odd breeding couples left in the world, mainly on Te Arai beach north of Auckland that was the initial inspiration for these songs. When I read, last year, that land at Te Arai had been sold to a rich American, John Darby, whose plans to develop the site with 46 expensive houses and a golf course for the rich had been approved, I was so dismayed that I decided I must write some music about them. Tentatively I put the idea to Denys Trussell who as a musician, poet, and environmentalist knew immediately what I was after.

He wrote a poem that tells of the simple beauty and vulnerability of the Fairy Tern (Tara-iti). I set it to music for piano and voice but then we both felt that one song was perhaps too insubstantial by itself so he produced three more bird poems for me to set which made it into a logical set, with Tara-iti becoming the second song. The first song tells of the countless birds to be seen moving over the Hauraki Gulf in the early morning. The Pukeko provides a light-hearted third song and the Karearea (New Zealand Falcon) is the fourth – also the most dramatic.


Performance history

19 Feb 2015: Recorded by Margaret Medlyn and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Hamish McKeich, as part of the 2015 NZSO/RNZ Concert/SOUNZ Recordings at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington.

21 May 2019: NZSM Orchestra | Darkness and Light
Featuring: Margaret Medlyn

03 Aug 2024: Dunedin Symphony Orchestra | Bach and the Birds

04 Aug 2024: Dunedin Symphony Orchestra | Bach and the Birds

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