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.
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.
Iris dreaming
One act opera for soprano and chamber ensemble
Text by Fleur Adcock
Iris dreaming was commissioned and premiered by soprano Joanne Roughton-Arnold. The first performance was accompanied by the Octandre Ensemble conducted by Jon Hargreaves, at the Grimeborn Festival in London in August 2016. The version with string trio was premiered with Joanne and NZTrio at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson on 6 February 2017.
About the work
Iris dreaming is based on the life of celebrated New Zealand writer and feminist, Iris Wilkinson (also know as Robin Hyde), whose short but intensely dramatic life took her from New Zealand via war-torn China to London on the brink of WWII where she killed herself in 1939, aged 33. She was a star, a significant figure in New Zealand literature, a respected journalist in her time and a pioneer of feminism.
Fiona Maddocks in her review for The Guardian noted, ‘Whitehead … mixes tonal and melodic writing with Māori and Pacific rim-inspired techniques, especially audible in music for flute and piccolo, or more overtly in the gentle, clattery wash of rainsticks.’
Instrumentation
Lyric coloratura soprano and a chamber ensemble of flute doubling piccolo, oboe, clarinets (B♭, E♭ and bass), bassoon, harp, 2 violins, viola, cello and double bass.
There is also a version for soprano and piano trio.
Score
The score will soon be available from SOUNZ.
Recordings
Films of performances both versions of the opera are available online.
Iris dreaming, London, August 2016 — video
Iris dreaming, Nelson, New Zealand, February 2017 — video
RNZ Concert’s recording of the New Zealand premiere in February 2017 is available online.
Reviews and interviews
The Waitangi Day performance in Nelson in 2017 was reviewed in the Nelson Evening Mail.
Opera Iris Dreaming tells tragic life of New Zealand writer Robin Hyde — Nelson Evening Mail
A review by Elizabeth Kerr of the Nelson performances was broadcast by RNZ Concert on Upbeat.
Adam Chamber Music Festival Waitangi weekend reviews — talk
Joanne was interviewed for Kim Hill’s programme on RNZ National.
Joanne Roughton-Arnold: Iris Dreaming — interview
There is also an interview with Joanne and me, filmed before the Nelson performances.
Festival conversations: Iris dreaming — interview
Bryan Crump interviewed me on RNZ National’s Nights programme shortly after my return from the premiere in London.
Three Sephardic Songs
3 Yiddish songs for mezzo and baroque ensemble
Texts: anonymous
The first performance of Three Sephardic Songs was given by Ana Good (mezzo) with Rare Byrds at a central Dunedin music venue called Dog with Two Tails in 2016.
About the work
The songs are:
- Schluf mein Tochter — a lullaby
- Leg ich mir mein Kapele — what happens when I lay my head beside that of first my mother, then my mother-in-law, and finally my husband, and
- Zum, zum — a nonsense song.
Instrumentation
The work is scored for: 2 recorder players — playing descant, alto, tenor and bass — guitar, spinet, violin, bass viol.
The instrumentation is not set — you can substitute appropriate instruments.
Score
Contact me to see the score.
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.