Chamber ensemble (2-7 players)
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.
No stars, not even clouds
For string quartet
No stars, not even clouds was commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand for the Enso Quartet. The work is dedicated to them and was premiered by them in Christchurch on 23 October 2012.
About the work
I wrote No stars, not even clouds at a time when several friends of mine were seriously ill, and at the forefront of my mind. Juanita Ketchel, who lived in Dunedin, was both diagnosed with cancer and died within the short time-frame in which the piece was written. She had a profound interest in the arts, and was frequently seen at concerts. The title No stars, not even clouds came from a story she wrote some years ago. The piece is written to her memory.
The piece draws on traditional quartet forms, opening with a phrase which I realised only retrospectively echoes the same shape and rhythm that pervades Tōrua, written for violin and piano in the immediate aftermath of the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch. Both pieces draw on the Otago accent of the korimako or bellbirds that seem to sing vociferously every time I sit down to write.
No stars, not even clouds is written in a single movement, but has elements of a tripartite structure within it.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
No stars, not even clouds — SOUNZ
A recording, released by Rattle CDs, can be bought from SOUNZ and all good record stores.
RNZ Concert recorded a performance by the Enso quartet.
Okuru
For violin and piano
Okuru was written in 1979, while I was composer-in-residence for Northern Arts, United Kingdom and a Fellow of Newcastle University.
About the work
On one level the composition is a 4-section working out of a complex mensural canon, and on another is my response to the arrival of spring after a particularly rigorous winter which I spent in an isolated cottage on the Northumbrian moors, north-west of Newcastle.
Score and recording
The score and part were published in 1991.
Contemporary Australian Violin: thirteen compositions for solo violin — publication
A recording was released on CD as part of a major project to record new Australian music.
Out the window breath, bone, feather
For cello, flute and clarinet
Out the window breath, bone, feather was commissioned with funding from Creative New Zealand, and supported by Carol Brown’s research award through the University of Auckland NICAI’s Faculty Research and Development Fund.
About the work
Choreographer Carol Brown and I devised Out the window breath, bone, feather — in collaboration with 8 exceptional performers, dramaturge Fiona Graham, photographer Solomon Mortimer and performance designer Kasia Pol — while I held the 3‐month University of Otago Wallace Residency at the Pah Homestead in Auckland. A performance on 21 October 2013 was the culmination of the residency — the music was performed by Luca Manghi (flute), Katherine Hebley (cello) and Andrew Uren (clarinet).
It is a site-specific piece in which the audience is led through Auckland’s Pah homestead from the portico to the crater behind the building. Working with sung and spoken text, dance, original music and working with the evocative paintings of Star Gossage, the piece allows glimpses into the history of the land, the house and its inhabitants.
It references prehistory with the dance of the moa, the use of the site as a Pah, the building of the house and the first family, the subsequent use of the building to house immigrants, as a boys’ home and as a convent. Today it is an art gallery and park for the people of Auckland.
Scores and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Out the window breath, bone, feather — SOUNZ
Hear and watch a recording of the performance at the Pah homestead.
Out the window breath, bone, feather — video
Interview
Before a season at the 2015 Auckland Festival, Carol Brown and I were interviewed on RNZ Concert.
Piano Trio
For violin, cello and piano
Piano Trio was commissioned by, and is dedicated to, the members of the NZTrio — Justine Cormack (violin), Ashley Brown (cello) and Sarah Watkins (cello). Its composition was funded by Creative New Zealand.
About the work
One winter morning, a short walk from the marae at Waihi, on the southern shore of Lake Taupo, I stood on the shore to watch the sun rise. Behind me, a waterfall led to a small stream that flowed into the lake, imposing its own patterns on those of the lake. The water was uniformly grey, but as the sun rose, for a moment the tops of the ripples were golden, with darker valleys between, before the whole area was flooded with light.
The ideas behind Piano Trio have to do with the changing perspectives of patterns in water — in the bubbling of streams, the tumble of a waterfall, in the spiralling eddies where stream meets lake at sunrise.
In the opening movement, a group of short themes and ideas initially form a mosaic-like section, which recurs in developed and varied forms around more reflective passages. The second movement reverses the first, in that slow, sustained sections are interrupted by more energetic material, and the final movement draws all the previous ideas together.
Score and recording
The score of Piano Trio has been published by Wai-te-ata Music Press.
NZTrio has recorded this work for the Rattle label.
Poroporoaki
For string quartet
Poroporoaki was written for the New Zealand String Quartet to play at the Zhejiang Conservatory in Hangzhou during at festival celebrating the work of Jack Body, and focusing on transcription and collaboration.
About the work
Poroporoaki, which translates from Māori as ‘calls of farewell’ transcribes the sounds of taonga pūoro as played by Richard Nunns. The instruments transcribed are the putatara (shell trumpet), karanga manu (bird caller), nguru (flute), tumutumu (percussive), poi awhiowhio (whirled gourd — bird caller) and putorino.
Poroporoaki is is dedicated to Richard Nunns.
Scores and recordings
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
The New Zealand String Quartet has recorded Poroporoaki for Atoll.
There are 3 RNZ Concert recordings online performed by the New Zealand String Quartet.