Music
Search this list of all my publicly available works using the search box, or the category and year lists. Information about each work includes where to buy, borrow or listen to it.
Three pieces for Gail
for solo violin
This work was written as a tribute to Martin Lodge (1954–2024) and premiered by Lara Hall on 26 April 2025 at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts in Hamilton. It was part of a commemoration concert which featured works by some of Martin’s closest composer friends.
About the work
This work is dedicated to Martin’s wife, Gail Pittaway.
Recording
A recording of the premiere, along with tributes by other senior New Zealand composers, has been released by Rattle Records.
Review
Elizabeth Kerr reviewed the commemoration concert for her blog.
The Journey of Mataatua Whare — the house that came home
unstaged opera in 4 sections for soprano, baritone, bass, SATB chorus and orchestra, with video and images prepared by Tessa Petersen.
Text in Māori and English by the composer.
Mataatua was commissioned by Tessa Petersen and the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra for matariki 2025. The first public performance took place on 28 June 2025 in Dunedin Town Hall with Rebecca Ryan (soprano), Tomairangi Henare (baritone), Paul Whelan (bass) and the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and chorus conducted by James Judd.
A private performance for Ngāti Awa was given by Opus Orchestra with the same soloists conducted by by Peter Walls in the Mataatua wharenui in Whakatane on 22 June.
About the work
This project was the vision Tessa Petersen, concertmaster of Dunedin Symphony Orchestra. Our collaboration involved extensive research, and consultation with iwi. We were honoured to have the wonderful support of Ngāti Awa, particularly that of Tā Hirini Moko Mead, and the South Island iwi Kaitahu, whose aroha surrounded Mataatua while it was in Ōtepoti Dunedin.
Mataatua tells the true story of the great wharenui Mataatua, built in Whakatane in1875 by Ngāti Awa. After a devastating period of war, land confiscations and contagious illnesses, the whare was built to recreate and honour the sacred ancestral figures that had been destroyed, and to encourage unity between the several iwi who had travelled to Aotearoa on Mataatua waka.
Against the will of the iwi, the house was ‘borrowed’ by the New Zealand government to be displayed in the Sydney International Exhibition, but the ownership of the house was soon lost sight of, and it travelled to Melbourne and London, where it spent 40 years in storage in the basement of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It returned to Dunedin in 1925 where it stood in Tūhura, the Otago Museum, for over 60 years before returning to Whakatane in 2011.
The tribulations Mataatua went through, being disassembled and rebuilt many times over the years, makes a very compelling and dramatic story. In the work, the baritone represents Te Ao Māori and is at times the voice of Ngāti Awa wordlessly lamenting the loss of their taonga. The bass represents the pākehā world assuming characters of a government official and a Waitangi tribunal judge, while the soprano represents the voice and the presence of Mataatua wharenui.
Instrumentation
Mataatua is scored for 2(doubling piccolo)222; 2211; harp, timpani, 2 percussion and strings.
Score
The score will be available from SOUNZ after the premiere performance.
Reviews
The Dunedin premiere was reviewed by Brenda Harwood for The Star.
History writ large in concert — Dunedin Symphony Orchestra
The Otago Daily Times published a review by Judy Bellingham.
Performances brilliantly crafted, balanced — Otago Daily Times
Elizabeth Kerr reviewed the performance in Hamilton on 17 May 2026 in Hamilton for her blog, Five Lines.
Mataatua and Beethoven: Opus Orchestra brings powerful musical stories to Waikato and Bay of Plenty
A review by Helen White was also published in New Zealand Opera News Summer Issue December 2025–February 2026 describing it as ‘an outstanding piece of theatre’.
the edge of dread and dance
For percussion
This work was commissioned by Justin DeHart with funding from Creative New Zealand and premiered by him on 30 June 2024 at Canterbury University.
About the work
The title, the edge of dread and dance, comes from Claire Beynon’s poem, There is a place.
There is a place between uphill
and down, on the edge of dread
and dance.
Instrumentation
The piece was written using specific instruments belonging to Justin DeHart.
Triangle, bell tree, mark tree, Almglocken (F4, F#4, G4), 3 cymbals (ll-h), wind gong, small tamtam, large tamtam, Thai gongs (D3, E3–B3, C4–B4, C5–D#5, G5), crotales (D#4–G4, A4–B4)
Vibraphone
8 wooden planks (l-h, no specific tuning), 2 log drums (higher and lower), a pair of bongos, a pair of congas, 18 inch rototom (or bass drum)
More traditional instruments could replace the less usual instruments – for example, wood and temple blocks could replace the wooden planks.
Performance notes
Tempo markings are approximate, not mandatory and rubato is possible within sections. The sections where the time signatures are cancelled are to be played at the performer’s discretion as far as tempo is concerned.
Mōtete
For piano trio
About the work
The te reo title Mōtete means ‘fragments’.
This work was commissioned by the New Zealand Chamber Soloists in 2023 as part of their ‘Seven Pieces Seven Women’ project. They gave the first performance on 16 July 2023 in the Auckland Concert Chamber.
Recording
Listen to an RNZ Concert recording of the premiere.
Gillian Whitehead: Mōtete — RNZ
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.
The Adam Festival: chamber music heaven — Five Lines
Recording
Listen to and watch the premiere by the New Zealand String Quartet with Bob Bickerton from February 2024.
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