We're kicking off our first trimester next week, and are welcoming our new students into the NZSM fold at an orientation session this Thursday. You can read about some of our incoming students in the news section below.

Events start up for the year soon, including our lunchtime concert series which begins on Friday 9 March. We're really pleased to be showcasing our first cohort of MFA students as part of the series. Also look out for us making a fun appearance at Cuba Dupa on 24 March – you can even take part!

Composer, performer and sound artist Antonia Barnett-McIntosh has been announced as the 2018 Creative New Zealand/Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence. She will take up the residency in July, and you can read more about her below.   

We imagine that you've been perusing the NZ Festival programme with as much excitement as we have. We're very proud that the events Mechanical Ballet, Drax Project and Te Ao Hou all involve our staff and graduates – read details below and book your tickets now.

NZ FESTIVAL | MECHANICAL BALLET

When: Friday 16 and Saturday 17 March, 7pm
Where: Hannah Playhouse
Tickets: Available here 
(NZSM students 50% discount when purchasing at box office on the day) 

A thrilling human/machine collaboration you don't want to miss – in Mechanical Ballet, witness mechatronic loudspeakers and percussion instruments keeping pace with percussionists from Stroma and top New Zealand pianists Sarah Watkins and Stephen De Pledge. 

The mechatronic and percussion instruments have been created by NZSM lecturers Jim Murphy and Mo Zareei, PhD graduate Bridget Johnson, and David Downes. These musicians/engineers are testament to the dynamic partnership between NZSM and the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University, with Jim, Mo and Bridget all having graduated from the joint PhD programme run by the two schools. 

The concert features Georges Antheil’s epic work Ballet Mécanique (1925) – best described as The Rite of Spring meets heavy metal – along with two seminal works by US minimalist icon Steve Reich, as well as world premieres of works by composers Bridget Johnson, David Downes and Michael Norris, and Mo Zareei's Rasping Music. 

NZ FESTIVAL | DRAX PROJECT

When: Saturday 17 March 8pm and Sunday 18 March 7pm
Where: Festival Club
Tickets: Available here 
(NZSM students 50% discount when purchasing at box office on the day) 

Described as a “gifted quartet grown from a music students’ busking project into one of the hottest tickets in town,” former NZSM jazz students Drax Project play the Festival Club on 17 and 18 March. Shaan Singh (saxophone and vocals), Sam Thomson (bass) and Matt Beachen (drums) all graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance from NZSM, and along with fellow band member Ben O'Leary have been making a name for themselves since, playing Auckland City Limits Festival, opening for Lorde in 2017, and opening for Ed Sheeran at Mt Smart Stadium in March this year.

NZ FESTIVAL | TE AO HOU

When: Tuesday 6 March, 6pm
Where: St Mary of the Angels
Tickets: Available here 
(NZSM students 50% discount when purchasing at box office on the day) 

Another ground-breaking collaboration by the virtuosic New Zealand String Quartet, NZSM ensemble in residence, will take place at the Festival, this time with current NZSM Composer-in-Residence Rob Thorne joining them. Rob, a master of taonga pūoro, will perform the world premiere of his Tomokanga with the New Zealand String Quartet, along with music by New Zealand composers Gillian Whitehead, Gareth Farr and Salina Fisher. Their concert Te Ao Hou will be held in the beautiful St Mary of the Angels. 

CUBA DUPA - CONDUCT US!

Ever wanted to have a go at conducting? At Cuba Dupa, students from the New Zealand School of Music Orchestra invite ABSOLUTELY ANYONE to step up to the podium, pick up the conductors baton, and have a go. 

Catch them in the middle of Cuba Mall on Saturday 24 March. Full Cuba Dupa programme out early March.

DEWAYNE PATE (BASS) & DAVE WILSON (SAXOPHONE) WITH THE NZSM BIG BAND

When: Monday 26 March, 8pm 
Where: The Bristol, Cuba Street

Legendary bassist Dewayne Pate teams up with saxophonist Dave Wilson, Rodger Fox and the NZSM Big Band for a concert that promises to blow your socks off! If you're up in Tauranga for the jazz festival over Easter you can catch them there too. 

FRIDAY LUNCHTIME CONCERTS

FRIDAY LUNCHTIME CONCERT | DIANE WALSH

FRIDAY LUNCHTIME CONCERT | MFA STUDENT SHOWCASE

When: Friday 16 March, 12:10pm
Where: Adam Concert Room 

In this special lunchtime concert (well, more of a lunchtime screening really), we showcase some of the work from the very first cohort of MFA (Creative Practice) students. Join us for a screening of film excerpts and shorts which have been scored by students, and listen to them talk about the creative processes and decision making behind their work.    

FRIDAY LUNCHTIME CONCERT | NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET

MUSIC FORUM

We have recently changed the time that Music Forum takes place – this year it will be held on selected Wednesdays, 4:15–5:30pm, in Room 209. We hope you can join us –all welcome. 

STRUCTURAL AND RHETORICAL CLOSURE IN POPULAR MUSIC; OR, HOW DO SONGS END? 

Wednesday 14 March, 4:15pm, Room 209
Dr Nick Braae, Waikato Institute of Technology
More info

SOUND BITES: CONDENSED RESEARCH MORSELS FOR THE MIND AND THE EAR

Wednesday 21 March, 4:15pm, Room 209
Victoria University of Wellington academic staff and postgraduate students:
Sasha Leitman
Mo Zareei
Carolyn Ayson
Ewan Clark

NEWS

EXPERIMENTAL MUSICIAN ANNOUNCED AS COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE 2018

Composer, performer and sound artist Antonia Barnett-McIntosh has been announced as the 2018 Creative New Zealand/Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence. Antonia’s experimental instrumental and vocal compositions involve sound gestures, their translation and adaptation, speech, text transcriptions and field recordings. She has collaborated extensively with musicians, theatre and filmmakers, dancers, visual artists and poets. Read more...

MUSIC A PATH TO INDEPENDENCE FOR 1ST​ YR STUDENT LIAM FUREY

Nikki Furey was told her four-year-old son Liam would never grow up to be an independent adult because of his autism. Now aged 19, he is ready to move out of the family home and into a flat in Wellington so he can begin a music degree at NZSM. Read more in this stuff article.

SIX STUDENTS FROM HAWKES BAY MUSIC PROGRAMME EARN PLACES AT NZSM

'When he received the email congratulating him on his success, Mr Crichton recalls crying with his parents out of sheer joy and excitement'. Six students from Hawkes Bay Project Prima Volta programme have been accepted to study at NZSM this year –Mahinarangi Lawrence, LJ Crichton (scholarship), Masunu Tuua (scholarship), Simon Hernyak, Sam McKeever and Ruby McKnight. Read more here or watch the video above to see what Project Prima Volta is all about. 

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

ALISON ISADORA

Some of you may know Alison as our 2016-2017 Composer in Residence, but Alison's current capacity with us is actually as a new PhD student. Below she tells us about her study, creative process and a trombone concert in a sea cave...

What is your PhD in?
I am interested in examining the artistic relationship between the composer and the performer, specifically in relation to Western art music.

In particular I want to examine issues of authorship/ownership and creative participation and will be composing works that deal with co-creation and collaboration through techniques such as indeterminacy, alternative notation and rehearsal sessions.

Why did you choose this?
My involvement over the years in a wide variety of performance and compositional practices has stimulated me to question the choices we make regarding the relationship between composer and performer. I am curious to examine the ethical and artistic consequences of these choices.

What is your musical background?
I grew up playing classical music but from my late teens became involved in a broad range of music making – post-punk bands, gamelan, free improvisation, baroque music, new music as well as subbing in the NZSO – a very wide scale of genres that did not always seem compatible! Those experiences left me with a great appreciation for the wealth of diversity within the musical landscape.

What are you most looking forward to as part of your study?
To spend 3 years focusing on one topic and to discover/invent the path that it takes me on.

What was the best thing you saw last year?
I would be hard put to choose one concert as it was a very rich year musically. A couple of highlights – hearing Francisco del Pino's Rondeau - Double for two trombones in a gigantic sea cave in the Faroe Islands was astonishing, especially with a natural reverberation of over one minute! I was lucky enough to attend the ISCM World New Music Days in Vancouver in November and heard a plethora of great concerts (although attending more than 20 concerts in 6 days with jet lag is not to be recommended!). Stand-out concerts were from the Driftwoood Percussion group with a piece for 10 hi-hats from Niel Lyhne Løkkegaard, the Bozzini Quartet concert and the Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal who performed a wonderful work from Iñaki Estrada Torio titled Astiro. Closer to my home-base in Amsterdam, I heard a great concert from the fabulous violinist Joseph Puglia which included Berio's Sequenza VIII for violin.

Tell us about your creative process - do you have a regular routine for composing, or...?
Although there are some constants within my creative process, different circumstances seem to stimulate their own specific practice.

The connection with the performer(s) is one such parameter. If I know the perfomers well, this influences how and what I write. I may try to include them somehow in the germinal stage of the process, or compose something that stimulates them specifically or works to their strengths as a performer.

Mostly I like to have a sense of the relationship between the form and the material before beginning to write, but sometimes the material seems to have a life of its own and another form emerges.

When I am at the stage of writing notes I find it helpful to make sure I compose every day and think about the piece before sleeping to encourage the subconscious to work for me!

What inspires you?
Any situation in which abstract patterns occur triggers my imagination. This can include flocks of birds, tukutuku patterns, abstract artists such as Jan Schoonhoven or patterns that emerge from plane vapor trails. Musically, works where I sense that the form and content are in dialogue excite, as do new timbral combinations and attention to performance aspects. 

Support the musicians, composers and scholars of the future

For some of New Zealand's most talented musicians, the only thing that stands in the way of their dreams is the lack of funds to make them real. For further information on how you can provide support for students at the New Zealand School of Music, please contact either: