2023 Music
Ngā roimata o Mānuka (The tears of Mānuka)
For string quartet and taonga pūoro
Ngā roimata o Mānuka was commissioned by the New Zealand String Quartet (NZSQ) and Bob Bickerton. The first performance was given on 4 February 2024 at the Nelson Centre for Musical Arts as part of the 2024 Adam Chamber Music Festival.
About the work
I wanted this commission for the NZSQ and Bob Bickerton (who ran the Adam Chamber Music Festival for many years) playing taonga pūoro to commemorate a place in the Nelson region, which I have come to know quite well over the years.
Haulashore Island off the coast at Whakatū (Nelson) was known as Mānuka in the mid-19th century; whether named by Māori or Pākehā is uncertain. But one meaning of mānu, according to Williams’ dictionary, is a ‘launching place’, the starting place of a journey, and it seems to me that may have been an earlier meaning of the name Mānuka, which was used by local iwi as a safe landing and camping place when hunting birds and kai moana on the Boulder Bank. Seen in this way, Mānuka is quite similar in meaning to Haulashore.
In 1906, the Cut was blasted in the Boulder Bank close to Mānuka to establish Nelson Haven, the forerunner of Port Nelson. Local iwi were concerned about the disturbance of the mauri of moana and whenua as altered currents reshaped the land and even changed river flows.
A decade or so ago, a group of friends went on a hikoi to the island — Lyell Cresswell, Richard Nunns, Jenny McLeod, Helen Bowater and myself, with Bob Bickerton ferrying us. We were supporting Lyell, whose great-great-grandfather emigrated from Britain but died of typhoid on the ship before setting foot on land, so was buried alone on Mānuka. (His family travelled on a different ship, arriving shortly afterwards to the news of his death.) Lyell, Richard and Jenny are no longer with us, but were very much in my mind while I wrote this abstract, rather than narrative, piece.
Review
The Adam Festival, including this work, was reviewed by Elizabeth Kerr for her blog Five Lines.
Ngā whetū o Matariki
For orchestra and taonga pūoro
Ngā whetū o Matariki (The stars of Matariki) was commissioned by the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra. It received its first performances, with Brent Stewart conducting and Ariana Tikao playing taonga pūoro, on July 22 and 23 at the King’s and Queen’s Performing Arts Centre in Dunedin.
About the work
Ngā whetu o Matariki celebrates the two harbingers of the Māori New Year — the star Puaka, particularly important to iwi in the south of Aotearoa, and Matariki, the Pleiades.
I found when I was writing the piece that I was thinking of many things — of the varying patterns in movement of stars and planets, of the appearance of Puaka and Matariki in the morning sky as the seasons change, of human ritual.
The work of Professor Rangi Matamua has revealed Māori beliefs concerning the star group Matariki — how, as the constellation first rises, the clarity of individual stars presage the quality of crops and weather for the new year; how our aspirations rise with the smoke from baking kumara to be understood by the stars; how the constellation was formed when Tāwhirimātea, distressed when his parents Rangi and Papatūānuku were driven apart by his brothers, tore out his eyes and threw them into the sky, where they splintered to form Matariki (the eyes of a chief); and how Taramainuku, the captain of the Waka in the sky, whose prow is Matariki and whose stern is in Orion, captures in his great net the souls of those who die each day, then releases them into the sky as stars at the time of Matariki.
Score
The score will be lodged with SOUNZ after the premiere.
Instrumentation
Ngā whetu o Matariki is scored for taonga pūoro, 1222, 2200, timpani, 2 percussion and strings. There is also an alternative version with 2 flutes.
Interview
Listen to an interview about the work on RNZ National.
Composer Dame Gillian Whitehead premieres a new work about Matariki — RNZ