2017 Music
still, echoing
For piano and string quartet
still, echoing was commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand for a national tour of the New Zealand String Quartet and British pianist Kathryn Stott. They premiered the work at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson on 7 May 2017.
About the work
still, echoing takes its title from Greg O’Brien’s poem ‘Te Whanga Lagoon’, which collects the water from most of the Chatham Islands’ rivers before draining into the Pacific at Hanson Bay.
The work is unified by a set of 6 notes that form the basic cell or idea of the piece. It explores the sound possibilities of different combinations of the instruments: at times the piano falls silent, leaving just the violins and viola in dialogue; elsewhere the viola and cello sing together with the piano.
The moments at which all the strings play in rhythmic unison provide cohesion and drive, evoking the irrevocable ebb and flow of wave and tide, and contrasting the tumult of the Pacific with the stillness of Te Whanga Lagoon on Chatham Island.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
SOUNZ filmed a performance for their Resound project.
RNZ Concert recorded the performance.
Rakiura
3 micropieces for piano
About the work
These 3 pieces were written to celebrate William Dart’s 70th birthday in 2017. They were written just after I had visited Rakiura (Stewart Island) for the first time.
Score
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Tūranganui
For orchestra
Tūranganui was commissioned by the NZSO to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival in Aotearoa. The first performance was given by them conducted by Hamish McKeich at the Michael Fowler Centre on 15 September 2018.
About the work
250 years ago, on 8 October 1769, Captain Cook and his men, with the best of intentions, made landfall in the Endeavour, on the east coast harbour of Tūranga-nui-a-kiwa (modern-day Gisborne). They went ashore to find water, but unfortunately things did not go to plan. In his diary Joseph Banks was to write, ‘thus ended the most disagreeable day my life has yet seen … and heaven send that such may never return to embitter future reflection.’
As a result of cultural misunderstandings that day, the first shots were fired in this country, and 4 Māori lost their lives.
While writing this piece, I was aware of what Cook and his party, and Māori arriving in the same place centuries earlier, would have felt — relief or elation at being on dry land, alongside heightened awareness, apprehension, wonder, fear. And for the iwi on shore, curiosity, maybe apprehension, but no foreknowledge of how the visitors would threaten and change their world order.
Tūranganui is part abstract, part programmatic — given the theme of landfall how could it not be — and I leave it to listeners to interpret it in their own way.
Instrumentation
Tūranganui is scored for: 2222; 4331; harp, timpani, 3 percussion and strings.
Percussion 1: wind chimes, stones, tomtoms
Percussion 2: tamtam, bass drum
Percussion 3: suspended cymbals, marimba, stones
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ soon.
The premiere performance was recorded as part of SOUNZ’s Resound project.
RNZ Concert’s recording from the premiere is available online.
Interview
The Otago Daily Times interviewed me after the premiere.