Participanting

NZ Composer

Short Biographies

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Programme Notes

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Andrew Perkins

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ANDREW PERKINS was born in Warkworth, New Zealand. 1992 he was appointed Auckland Philharmonia’s third Composer In Residence, writing for them. Andrew completed his PhD Music at Melbourne University, graduating in 2013. He now resides in Dunedin, NZ. Andrew has had a number of significant works recorded and performed in New Zealand and internationally, Symphony Der Bote for mezzo soprano and orchestra, Waltz-Fantasia for orchestra (2012), Vespers for Pentecost for soprano, choir, tambura, and orchestra (2012), The Radish and the Shoe for narrator and orchestra, Three Spanish Songs for mezzo and orchestra, and Concerto Grosso for flute, harpsichord and strings (2015). 

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Andrew Perkins – Three Katherine Mansfield Songs
9. Very Early Spring
10. The Gulf
11. The Earth-child in the Grass

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Andrew has chosen three poems by Katherine Mansfield that make use of the imagery of nature. These works offer readers, and now listeners, insight into the complex nature of her relationships with men and women. Although each song is based on a different scalar formation, the scales share common characteristics. Similar melodic shapes and intervals also help to unify the three songs. In Very Early Spring, Mansfield personifies the sun as a male figure, and the wind as female, interacting but remaining separate. The song is full of contrasting musical gestures – some strong and cool, and others delicate and warm. In The Gulf, the lovers are separated by a gulf, but no mention is made of the identity of the two. The idea of bridging the gulf is usually viewed as a metaphor for Mansfield’s constant searching for fulfilment. The gulf is represented in the music through the extreme registers in the piano and vocal part, and between voice and piano. An ever-shifting ostinato creates an air of tension in the music throughout the song. In The Earth-child in the Grass, the lovers are represented by the counterpoint between the voice and piano part. The sensuous use of metaphor in the poetry, such as the green blades of grass, the move from coldness to warmth, and from weeping to laughter is likewise reflected in the music. I have added another impersonal witness to this natural scene in the form of a bird whose song can be heard in the piano part.

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Anthony Ritchie

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ANTHONY RITCHIE is a renowned composer whose works have been performed by ensembles such as The Takacs Quartet, and soloists such as Bella Hristhova. His many commissioned works include concertos for piano, violin, viola, flute, guitar and euphonium, six symphonies, six operas and chamber music. In 2016 he was joint winner of The NZ Classical Album of the Year. His Symphony No.5 ‘Childhood’ was rated one of the recordings of the year by MusicWeb International, 2022. Anthony is currently Professor of Music at The University of Otago in Dunedin, and Head of the School of Performing Arts.

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Anthony Ritchie – Exquisite Spirit

1 - To L.H.B.

2 - The Sea-Child

3 - Loneliness

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Exquisite Spirit comprise three songs for mezzo soprano and piano, based on poems by famous New Zealand writer, Katherine Mansfield. The songs are To L.H.B. (1894-1915), The Sea-Child, and Loneliness, and are symbolic evocations of Mansfield’s own life experiences. The first song is about her brother who died in World War I, and the longing to be reunited. Some fo the tragic darkness in Mansfield’s life is captured in the music of these songs.

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Ross James Carey

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A native of Te Awa Kairangi/Lower Hutt, ROSS JAMES CAREY's explorations of words and music include accompanying Chinese, Indonesian and western art songs, composing poetry (his meditation on a 2020 lockdown, 'Xinzheng Couplets' is published online by SOUNZ), music theatre ('Kate Kelly', libretto by Merrill Findlay) as well as art songs.  The latter includes settings of Ruth Dallas and Fleur Adcock and a current project setting poems by Rina Ombara in the original Bahasa Indonesia.  Ross has performed his own and other contemporary composers' works around the Asia-Pacific while his compositions have been performed by interpreters including pianist Gao Ping, Continuum Ensemble Toronto and the Aroha String Quartet. A list of his published scores can be found at https://sounz.org.nz/contributors/1111. 

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Two Poems of Katherine Mansfield

22. Sea Song

23. There is a Solemn Wind Tonight 

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The two poems of Katherine Mansfield’s I’ve chosen both resonate for me on a very intimate level. ‘There is a Solemn Wind Tonight’ speaks of that elemental force of nature that every born and bred Wellingtonian feels in their bones, and that perhaps continues to have a mysterious kind of hold upon our psyches. Sea Song likewise is an ode to memory, those bittersweet echoes of a more carefree existence that Mansfield seems to acknowledge begrudgingly: ‘Memory dwells in my faraway home/She has nothing to do with me’. ‘Sea Song’ concludes with an extended passage for piano solo during which our poet/protagonist attempts to reconcile her alienated present with an idealised yet ultimately out of reach past. Two Poems of Katherine Mansfield were composed in Xinzheng, China in May & June 2023 and are dedicated to their first interpreters, Tessa Romano and Sherry Grant, and to John Sharpley, like K.M. a fellow traveller across cultures and a chronicler of imaginative power.

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Kenneth Young

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As one of New Zealand’s foremost composers, Kenneth Young’s works are performed regularly throughout Australasia, Europe, and America. For over twenty years until 2019 he was a lecturer in composition and conducting at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University Wellington, before moving to Dunedin to take up the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago. Young is also one of New Zealand’s leading conductors. He has worked with all the major orchestras in New Zealand and Australia while also making appearances in the United Kingdom and Japan. His numerous recordings of New Zealand and Australian orchestral music have been recognised internationally. https://rattle.co.nz/artists/kenneth-young

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15. The World is Beautiful Tonight

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The contrast of wonder at the beauty of the night and all who glow in it, alongside the poet’s self-despair, appealed to me very much in this short verse. One of Mansfield’s most poignant.

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Michael Norris

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MICHAEL NORRIS is a composer, software developer and music theorist. He teaches composition at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, is editor of Wai-te-ata Music Press, and directs Stroma New Music Ensemble. He is the recipient of the Mozart Fellowship in 2001, the Douglas Lilburn Prize in 2003, the CANZ Trust Fund Award in 2012, and has won the SOUNZ Contemporary Award four times, in 2014, 2018, 2019 and 2020. He has had works performed at festivals such as Donaueschingen, with performers such as the Hilversum Radio Chamber Orchestra, Soundinitiative, Ensemble Nikel, the NZSO, Roberto Fabbriciani, the NZSQ, NZTrio, the Viennese Saxophonic Orchestra, Ensemble Offspring, Ensemble Reconsil, and the Ensemble Pierrot Lunaire Wien. Michael's suite of real-time audio effects, 'SoundMagic Spectral', is widely used in both industry and academia worldwide, by artists such as Aphex Twin and Brian Eno. Michael’s other research interests include post-tonal theory, New Zealand music and the intersection between maths and music. For more information, visit www.michaelnorris.info,

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7. Michael Norris: In the Rangitaki Valley

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In November 1907, Kathleen Beauchamp (later Katherine Mansfield)—then aged 19—joined friends on a lengthy camping trip through the heartland of the North Island, travelling by caravan from Hastings through to Rotorua, along what is now State Highway 5. At the Waipunga Falls near the settlement of Rangitaiki (sometimes misspelled ‘Rangitaki’) on the border of Hawke’s Bay and Bay of Plenty, she experienced one of those typical shimmering summer days, where the boisterous winds placed the world into constant motion around her. A year or two later, after she had left New Zealand never to return, she would look back on this day and capture her impressions in the unabashedly romantic and joyous poem ‘In the Rangitaki Valley’.

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Thomas Goss

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THOMAS GOSS is a professional composer and orchestrator whose scores have been performed and recorded in 9 different time zones, in a variety of genres from film and crossover to ballet and the concert stage. He has held the position of Education Composer-in-Residence with Orchestra Wellington for 16 years, creating long-running schools tours and education concerts. He also directs the internet community and YouTube channel Orchestration Online, with an estimated 100,000 followers across several social media platforms. His orchestrations of Pasifika songs for NZSO’s “Mana Moana” concerts with Signature Choir were premiered in Wellington in 2022, with a repeat performance coming this November in Auckland.  https://orchestrationonline.com/bio/.

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12. Thomas Goss: Across the Red Sky

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Thomas Goss' setting of “Across the Red Sky” manifests the cries of birds, the cool uncertainty of the evening sky, and the gentle flapping of bird’s wings. The vocal line looks back across a century of art song in its character, shaping the melodic curve along the arc of Mansfield’s reflective disquiet and wonder at the beauty of nature.

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David Hamilton​

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DAVID HAMILTON i(b.1955) was Head of Music at Epsom Girls Grammar School until the end of 2001. He has been Deputy Music Director of Auckland Choral (1996-2011) and Composer-in-Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (1999). He works part-time in music education as a composition tutor and choral conductor. He is well-known as a choral composer and conductor, workshop leader and adjudicator. His choral music is widely performed, and is published in the UK, USA, Germany, Spain and Finland. His music has won numerous competitions in New Zealand, and also internationally (Italy, USA (6 times), Israel, Spain, Australia. and the UK). For more information, visit www.dbhmusic.co.nz

THREE CHILDREN’S SONGS OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD (2023)

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18. This is Just a Little Song

19. The Lonesome Child

20. A Day in Bed

These three settings were written for a centennial concert of songs setting the poetry of Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Mansfield wrote short stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews, and is regarded as a central figure in British modernism.Three story collections were published while she was alive and two posthumously. She spent much of her life in England and Europe, eventually succumbing to tuberculosis. These children’s poems, from the 1907 collection “Children’s Book of Verse”, are early examples of her writing and not as widely known as her later poetry and short stories.They have a charm all of their own, while following the conventions of similar writers of the period such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Hans Christian Andersen, andWalter de la Mare. The three poems set here all have a bittersweet tinge - from the child suffering illness, to the lonely child desperately wanting playmates, and the child confined to bed with a cold wondering if she’s been abandoned. “Three Children’s Songs of Katherine Mansfield” was written for pianist Sherry Grant and mezzo-soprano Tessa Romano       

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Nigel Keay

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Originally from New Zealand, NIGEL KEAY today lives and works in Paris, France as a composer and violist. Throughout his musical career he has always been an active participant in presenting his own music either as a violist or on occasions as conductor. Before leaving New Zealand in 1998 Nigel Keay had held several fulltime composer-in-residence positions; the Mozart Fellowship in Dunedin, Nelson School of Music and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

His music has been broadcast by Radio France on several occasions; in October 2013 Nigel Keay was the featured guest on Radio France Musique's Tapage Nocturne programme. Nigel Keay's works are increasingly being presented in prestigious concert venues in Europe and further afield. These include:  Diversions for Quintet at the Graz Opera, Austria, at Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal, at the Paris Oboe Festival. His Introduction and Tarantella was premiered at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC.

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6. Nigel Keay: Voices of the Air (2023)

Voices of the Air is a setting of the poem by Katherine Mansfield for mezzo-soprano and piano, and was composed in July 2023 for Sherry Grant and Tessa Romano. Between each stanza is a micro-interlude for the piano alone, thus as a consequence the song has a somewhat undulating form, where the music of the verses tends toward the minimal, and that of the piano generates more activity, in effect a wave motion in reference to the "sea and wind" of the text. Concurrently with working on Voices of the Air I was preparing a work by Arnold Trowell for an upcoming performance, a work that was almost certainly composed in Katherine Mansfield's lifetime, and we know that Mansfield would've been familiar with Trowell's music, so it seemed appropriate, while setting the poem, to be immersed in this particular sound-world.

Voices of the Air was written in 1916. Katherine Mansfield's brother, Leslie Heron Beauchamp died 6 October 1915 aged 21 years old and is buried at Ploegsteert Wood Military Cemetery, Belgium.

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Ben Fernandez

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BEN FERNANDEZ is a classically trained jazz pianist, composer and arranger. He has a Masters’ Degree in Music majoring in Jazz performance from the University of Auckland. He also has degrees in Physics, Computer Science and Business
Management. Ben has performed at concerts and events in over 25 countries and is an award-winning composer for jingles, TV shows and short films. He has released 8 Albums of his music here in NZ. Ben is also an educator and teaches music at schools and colleges in Auckland. He conducts regular workshops on improvisation in New Zealand and overseas. Ben has just finished composing music for a new rock musical that will be staged early next year. He is also one of the creatives selected to be a part of the Ockham Collective 2023 Visit www.benfernandez.com for further details about Ben and his music.

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16. Ben Fernandez: Covering Wings

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In song form the tune is a jazz ballad with 2 verses followed by a bridge and then a final verse.

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The tune tries to convey the feeling of searching for love , for acceptance, for understanding. Each section has a constantly changing key centre that signifies dealing with change and trying to find one's way as we journey through life. However in the final verse we return back to the original key and it is like a 'homecoming' in some ways. The tune has a very playful nature and implores us to find the inner child in each of us.'

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Peter Adams

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PETER ADAMS is a Professor of Music at Otago University and a well-known conductor and composer. Peter has guest conducted all around New Zealand and Australia with orchestras, brass bands, and choirs. As a composer, Adams has written many works and arrangements that have been performed throughout New Zealand and in the UK and North America. He has written orchestral pieces, several works for brass band and concert wind band, and chamber music for woodwind and string combinations. His music has been published and his two string quartets have both been recorded by the Jade Quartet on Rattle Records CDs. For more info visit https://www.otago.ac.nz/performing-arts/staff/otago624986.html

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14. Peter Adams: The Secret

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The Secret’ is one of the poems in Katherine Mansfield’s collection of poems written from
1911-1913. It speaks of a ‘rainbow shell’ to be found in ‘the profoundest ocean’ and this
colourful shell has always been there silently singing whether the water is stormy or quiet.
Peter Adams’s music has gentle ripples of upward semiquavers in the piano in a simple
setting where the piano symbolizes the water and the voice ‘sings’. The rippling semiquaver
figure is turned upside down in a section in 7/8 time where the music gains a little momentum
before ending as it began in simle timeless modality.

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Yvette Audain

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YVETTE AUDAIN is equally happy composing and arranging for various combinations of instruments as she is simply improvising in the moment. She is an experienced orchestrator who has also written plenty for herself to perform as a woodwind player such as in her 2014 album release Grooves Unspoken. A recent development in her compositional process is to improvise and record at the instrument, later transcribing into a written piece, as was the process for Wera, a commission for pianist Sharon Joy Vogan Cawston's upcoming Suite Aotearoa album project.

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13. Yvette Audain: Malade

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Malade was suggested to me by Sherry Grant and after a quick read I accepted. It may be short in length but to me it provided a perfectly potted little vehicle for a juxtaposition of wit and pathos. At times it is a cheeky, nonchalant tango; other times it casts a melancholic glance over its shoulder at the man in the adjacent room...

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Janet Jennings​

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DR JANNET JENNINGS writes for a wide range of forces including instrumental ensembles (chamber and orchestral music), voices (solo and choral music), and for stage (opera and dance). Her intention in setting texts by Katherine Mansfield and is to communicate and celebrate the words of the poet. Janet’s works have been supported by Creative NZ, performed nationally and internationally, recorded by Radio NZ, SOUNZ Resound, toured for Chamber Music NZ, and are broadcast regularly on RNZ Concert. Atoll Records has released five albums of her music – all available for purchase from Marbecks Records.

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5. Janet Jennings: Jangling Memories

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The text is the 32 nd poem in Katherine Mansfield’s 35-poem collection, The Earth Child, sent to a London publisher in 1910. She was 22 years old.The collection was not published, but this poem, Jangling Memory, appeared in a 1911 edition of the literary magazine Rhythm, edited at the time by John Middleton Murry. The challenge for the singer is to convey the layers of mood and meaning expressed in the text.The “old tie” symbolizes the bond between the narrator and her companion and a lost time of youthful innocence.The narrator’s mocking laughter is superficially cheerful but the memory is "jangling"; she laughs but her tears are close to the surface throughout the song.The tears should be almost, but not quite, hidden. Address the audience directly; act the part - you could even use a tie as a prop. Telling the story and acting the part are more important than exact pitches and rhythms.