Work
Turanga-nui
for orchestra
About
On 8 October 1769, Captain Cook and his men made landfall at Turanga-nui-a-kiwa, modern day Gisborne. Gillian writes that while composing she, “considered what Cook and his party, and Māori arriving here centuries earlier, would have felt - relief and elation at being on dry land, alongside heightened awareness, apprehension, wonder, fear. And for the iwi on shore, curiosity, apprehension maybe, but no foreknowledge of how the visitors would threaten and change their world order.”
Commissioned note
Composed for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Cook's Landfall Series