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John Psathas - Helix (2007) - 20'
John Psathas, a 2003 Arts Laureate of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, is one of New Zealand's most frequently performed composers and he is considered one of the finest amongst the younger generation of composers in this country. With works in the repertoire of such high profile musicians as Evelyn Glennie, Michael Brecker, the The Halle Orchestra, The Netherlands Blazers Ensemble and others, he has established an international profile and receives regular commissions from organisations in New Zealand and overseas. A vital energy and a unique feel for colour and line mark his music.
John studied composition and piano at Victoria University of Wellington, followed by further study with composer Jacqueline Fontyn in Belgium. He now lectures in music at Victoria University and continues to fulfil a busy schedule of commissions. Reflecting on his creative career, John has said, "Composing for me is essentially a continual re-travelling of a journey that begins with 'any conceivable thing is possible at this moment' and concludes with, 'it couldn't be anything but this'.
Jack Body - Fire in the Belly (2006) - 5'
Jack Body was born in Te Aroha in 1944, and studied at Auckland University, with further experience in Cologne and at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht. During 1976-77 he was a guest lecturer at the Akademi Musik Indonesia, Yogyakarta, and since 1980 he has lectured at the School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington.
His music covers most genres, including solo and chamber music, orchestral music, music-theatre, music for dance and film as well as electro-acoustic music. A fascination with the music and cultures of Asia, particularly Indonesia, has been a strong influence on his music. He has also worked in experimental photography and computer-controlled sound-image installations. As an ethnomusicologist his published recordings including music from Indonesia and China, including a recent set of four CDs,'South of the Clouds', field recordings of pioneer Chinese researcher Zhang Xingrong.
He has been commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia, the NZ String Quartet, the NZ Symphony Orchestra, and many other groups, and has written three works for the Kronos Quartet. His opera "Alley", based on the life of Rewi Alley was premiered to wide acclaim at the 1998 NZ International Festival of the Arts. In 2003 he was a featured composer at the 'Other Minds Festival' in San Francisco, and in 2004 he was honoured by a 'Composer Portrait' concert in the NZ International Festival. Most recently he was commissioned by the Atlas Ensemble (resident ensemble in the 2004 Holland Festival), and was a guest of the Encuentros 2004 International Festival in Buenos Aires.
In 1999 he was awarded an OMNZ for his services to music, to education and to photography, and in 2004 he was honoured by the Arts Foundation of NZ as a laureate - an award that included a cash prize of $50,000.
Jack Body has been a passionate advocate for NZ music, beginning with the early Sonic Circus in Wellington in the 1960s, up to New Music New Zealand at the Ijsbreker in Amsterdam in 2001, and in May 2005 he curated two concerts of NZ music in the Aboretum of NZ flora at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been the editor of Waiteata Music Press since 1980, publishing scores of New Zealand music. He has also produced over eighteen CDs of music by New Zealand composers.
James Gardner - Blessed Unrest (2006) - 5'
James Gardner was born in Liverpool, England in 1962 and spent much of the 1980s playing synthesizers for a variety of well-known artists. In 1990 he co-founded the band and remix team Apollo 440.
Composing notated music had long formed a parallel stream to these activities, however, and in 1991 Gardner's piano piece Shattered/Blue Ground was runner-up in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Composers' Competition. Following encouragement from Michael Finnissy, Gardner left Apollo 440 in order to concentrate on composition, and attended Brian Ferneyhough's classes at the Viitasaari Summer Academy in Finland.
He moved to New Zealand in 1994, and two years later set up the ensemble 175 East, of which he is currently director. His compositions have been played and broadcast throughout New Zealand as well as in the UK, mainland Europe, the United States and South America.
In 2003 Gardner was the recipient of the CANZ Trust Fund Award, awarded annually for compositional achievement, by the Composers' Association of New Zealand.
James is an active broadcaster for Concert FM radio, having written and presented many acclaimed programmes on the music of Birtwistle, Cage, Maxwell Davies, Nancarrow, Xenakis and Zappa as well as on the James Bond film scores of John Barry.
Gardner was the inaugural Composer-in-Residence at Victoria University of Wellington from 2004-5, and will be the 2005 SOUNZ/AMC Trans-Tasman exchange composer, collaborating with the Australian ensemble ELISION.
Ross Harris - Senryu (2006) - 5'
Ross Harris was born in the small town of Amberley in North Canterbury in 1945. He was educated in Christchurch and attended University of Canterbury before moving to Victoria University of Wellington to complete his music education. He was a teacher at Victoria University between 1971 and 2003 and is now a freelance composer.
In the 1960s he played tuba and french horn in the National Youth Orchestra and went on to play french horn in the NZSO. More recently he has played jazz saxophone and now concentrates on jazz trumpet and accordion.
Ross Harris has written over 100 works including operas, songs, chamber music, electronic music, symphonic music and jazz. In 1985 he was awarded a QSM for Public Service following the premiere of his opera Waituhi with libretto by Witi Ihimaera. In 1990 he was awarded the CANZ Citation for Services to New Zealand Music. In 2000 Ross Harris was awarded the SOUNZ Contemporary Award for his chamber work, To the Memory of I.S. Totzka, and his composition At the edge of silence was a finalist in 2004. He is currently Composer in Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia.
Lyell Cresswell - Moto Perpetuo (2006) - 6'
Lyell Cresswell was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 13 October 1944. He studied in Wellington, Toronto, Aberdeen and Utrecht. After some teaching at Glasgow University he joined Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff as Music Organiser (1978-80). He returned to Scotland as Forman Fellow in Composition at Edinburgh University until 1982 and spent the next three years as Cramb Fellow in Composition at Glasgow University. In 1987 he won the Ian Whyte Award for the Orchestral work Salm, and in 1979 received the APRA Silver Scroll for his contribution to New Zealand music. His works have been recommended by the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 1979, 1981 and 1988. Since 1985 he has been a full-time composer based in Edinburgh.
Lyell Cresswell has been a featured composer at Musica Nova, Glasgow 1984; Sonorities Festival of Twentieth Century Music, Belfast 1985; Asian Music Festival, Tokyo 1990; New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, Wellington 1990; St. Magnus Festival, Orkney 1991; Musica Insieme, Bologna 1992; Academy Now! Festival, Glasgow 1993; Middelburg Festival, Netherlands 1993; "Lyell Cresswell is Fifty" Festival at the Tramway, Glasgow 1994, in February 1996 at the Concerti Aperitivo, Teatro Comunale, Modena, and in April 1998 at the Federico García Lorca festival, Bologna. He has been a guest of the Warsaw Autumn Festival 1985; the Philippine-Asian Music Festival, Manila 1988, Festival of the Asian Composers' League, Taipei 1994, guest lecturer at L'Accademia di Brera, Milan 1987 and L'Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna 1994, and artistic director of the New Zealand, New Music festival in Edinburgh in 1998. In 1989 his Speak for us, great sea was performed at the BBC Proms, London, and in 1995 Dragspil for accordion and orchestra received its first performance at the Proms (for which it was commissioned).
His most recent large-scale works are Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet (commissioned by the City of Aberdeen for the Yggdrasil Quartet and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) and KAEA (Trombone Concerto) for Christian Lindberg and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
John Rimmer - Burning the Calories (2006) - 6'45"
New Zealand composer of mostly stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, piano, and electroacoustic works that have been performed in Asia, Australia, Europe, New Zealand, and North America.
Mr. Rimmer initially studied at the University of New Zealand, where he earned his BA in 1961, and later studied composition with Ronald Tremain at the University of Auckland, where he earned his MA in 1963 and where he also had post-graduate studies in musicology. He then studied electronic music with Gustav Ciamaga and analysis and composition with John Weinzweig at the University of Toronto and earned his DMus there in 1972.
Among his many honours are the Philip Neill Memorial Prize from the University of Otago in Dunedin (1971, for Composition 2; 2003, for Bowed Insights) and First Prize in the International Horn competition in the USA (1983, for De Aestibus Rerum). In addition, he received the Prix de la Confédération Internationale de la Musique Électroacoustique de Bourges (1986, for Fleeting Images). He served as composer-in-residence to the Auckland Philharmonia in 2002-03.
He lectured at North Shores Teachers College in Auckland from 1970-74 and served as composer-in-residence at the University of Otago in Dunedin in 1972, on a Mozart Fellowship. He taught at the University of Auckland from 1974-99 and founded its electronic music studio in 1976 and its new music ensemble, the Karlheinz Company, in 1978. There he was awarded a personal professorial chair in music in 1995.
Chris Cree Brown - The Triumvirate (2005) - 5'
Chris Cree Brown (b1953) is a senior lecturer at the School of Music, University of Canterbury. His main interests include conventional instrumental composition, electro-acoustic and computer music, and inter-media art. He has twice been awarded the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago, has twice been appointed Composer-in-Schools, has won two prizes in the Wellington Youth Orchestra's Young Composers Competition, and has written a number of film scores.
His recent exhibitions include The Dinner exhibited in the Physics Room in collaboration with Fiona Gunn, and his recent compositions include Memories Apart (commissioned by 175 East), The Watertable, for Flute and Tape (commissioned by the New Zealand Flute society), and Y2K Pacemaker commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Along with Icescape, for orchestra, is an electro-acoustic work, Under Erebus that were both a result of a trip to Antarctica under the Artists to Antarctica programme run under the auspices of Antarctic New Zealand (and with the assistance of Creative New Zealand). Both Memories Apart (2002) and Icescape (2003) were finalist compositions in the Sounz Contemporary Music Awards.
He has a strong interest in Aeolian harps and in 2002 exhibited a design in the Christchurch Botanical gardens as part of the Art and Industry Scape Biennale.
His work has been performed in many countries, including Australia, England, Finland, Hungary, France, Germany, Canada, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, United States of America.
Gillian Whitehead - Piano Trio (Sept 2004) - 20'
After graduating from Victoria University of Wellington, and further study in Australia and Britain with Peter Maxwell Davies, Gillian Whitehead worked as a free-lance composer in Britain before moving to Sydney in the 1980s, where she taught at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is currently based in Dunedin.
A steady stream of works over the years has established her as one of the most important composers working in the Australasian region. Her music has been widely performed and broadcast, with many pieces published or released on disc. Her works include monodramas and operas, pieces for orchestra and other large ensembles as well as numerous chamber, choral, instrumental and vocal pieces. Her recent work has often included the voices of taonga puoro, and/or improvisational content. In 1999 she was awarded the MNZM for services to music, and in 2000 was honoured by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand as one of five inaugural Laureates (for artistic achievement). Three times winner of the SOUNZ Contemporary award, she was composer-in-residence with the Auckland Philharmonia during 2000 and 2001, and in 2003 was given an honorary doctorate by Victoria University of Wellington, where she took up the year-long position of composer-in-residence in July 2005.
Garth Farr - Triple Concerto (May 2004) - 25'
Premiered with the Christchurch Symphony on 1 October 2005
Gareth Farr is a New Zealand composer and percussionist. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on Leap Year Day 1968. He studied in New Zealand and New York, where he graduated Master of Music.
In 1993, at the age of 25, Gareth Became Chamber Music New Zealand’s youngest composer-in-residence and since then, his works have been commissioned and performed by the NZSO, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Wellington Sinfonia, the NZ String Quartet, the NZ Trio and a variety of other professional musicians in NZ and overseas.
Gareth was commissioned to write a work to celebrate the opening of Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand, and the resulting work, combining symphony orchestra with soprano, tenor and karanga (indigenous New Zealand Maori chant) was hailed as “music with a powerful and moving impact that transcends idiom and individual taste”. A recent highlight was the performance of two of Gareth’s works by the NZSO at the Sydney Olympics; the percussion concerto Hikoi which was composed for and performed by the internationally-renowned Evelyn Glennie, and Wairua, a unique work combinging a Maori kapa haka (performing arts) group with the full symphony orchestra.
Five full-length CDs of his music have been released to date on the Trust Records label - chamber orchestra, chamber music, string quartets and two orchestral CDs. A CD single of Te Papa was also released in 1998.
For more information visit:Gareth's website
Rachel Clement - Piano Trio (Sept 2003) - 10’
 Rachel Clement studied composition with John Rimmer and John Elmsly at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor of Music with honours in 1995 and a Master of Music (composition) with distinction in 1997.
She has worked extensively as a composition tutor in secondary schools and in 1998 held the position of Composer in Schools for the Auckland area. She co-convened the 1999 and 2000 Nelson Young Composers’ Workshops and has also worked as a keyboard harmony tutor at the University of Auckland, lectured and facilitated workshops in Composition Education, written and reviewed for Chamber Music NZ and Music in NZ magazine, stage managed the Christchurch Symphony and received Creative NZ funding towards compositions for the groups Nahandove (2000), Five (2000), Duo Solaris (2001/3), Stroma (2001), and 175 East (2002). Her children’s opera Jam (also funded by Creative NZ) with libretto by Margaret Mahy, was performed in 2002 by Canterbury Opera Youth and was selected to feature as part of the 2002 Wild Opera project.
Rachel was the recipient of the 2001 Trust Fund Award from the Composers Association of New Zealand and has been a South Island representative on the CANZ committee since this time. She is currently president of the Composing Women’s Network of New Zealand Wahine Kaitita Herea a Aotearoa Incorporated and has served as a member of the Composer Advisory Panel for the Centre for NZ Music (SOUNZ).
Chamber works form the greater portion of Rachel’s compositions to date; her Three Pieces for Piano Trio (1996) were performed at Musicwomen Aotearoa, the 1999 Composing Women's Festival, and have been broadcast on Concert FM. Recent works include fracture for mezzosoprano, flute, piano and cello, scoria for Bb/Eb clarinets, bass clarinet, violin, cello and timpani, knitting dust for Bb/Eb clarinets, piccolo/flute, horn, cello, bass, harp and percussion and feeblbeast for bass clarinet, bass trombone, bass and percussion. Her children’s opera - jam, was scored for a small chamber orchestra - string quintet, flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon, piano and percussion.
Michael Norris - Piano Trio "Dirty Pixels" (May 2003) - 11’
 Michael was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1973. After several years at Otago University, he moved to Wellington where he graduated with a BMus(Hons) from Victoria University, studying with Jack Body and Dr. John Young. In 1997 he received a Commonwealth Scholarship to City University, London, where he completed an MA in Electroacoustic Composition, studying with Dr. Simon Emmerson and Prof. Denis Smalley.
His music has received performances in Sydney, London, New York, Bourges, Florida, Montréal, Yokohama, Wales, Birmingham and Berlin, as well as numerous performances in New Zealand. In 2000, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mathias Bamert, toured his orchestral work Nightdances, which was one of five finalists in the Music 2000 Prize. His ensemble work Momenta was placed second in the Asian Composers League Young Composers Competition 2000, held in Yokohama, Japan. He has won the Philip Neill Memorial Prize and was nominated for a Chapmann Tripp Award for theatre sound design. In 2001, Michael was profiled on Peter Mechen's Emerging Composers radio series on Concert FM, and was interviewed as part of the Upbeat! programme also on Concert FM.
Michael is a co-founder of Stroma, a contemporary chamber ensemble based in Wellington. Their first concert featured his piece Wind Shear for solo flute, performed by Bridget Douglas - principal flute with the NZSO.
In 2001, Michael was appointed the Composer-in-Residence with the Southern Sinfonia, Dunedin. His first completed work for them, From the lonely margins of the sea, received its premiere in August 2001, and is due to be workshopped by the NZSO in March 2002. He also completed his first symphony, Symphony No. 1: the mountains ponder a silence as profound as stars, which was premiered by the Southern Sinfonia in June 2002, conducted by Marc Taddei.
In 2002, Michael was awarded the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago, a year-long composing residency in Dunedin. During that period he completed commissions for the following performers: Bridget Douglas and Rachel Thomson (Wellington), 175 East (Auckland), Stroma (Wellington), Ensemble Multifoon (Amsterdam), Michael McCartney (UK), Southern Sinfonia (Dunedin). He also completed a new orchestral work, Rays of the Sun, Shards of the Moon, which was chosen as one of four finalists in the NZSO's Douglas Lilburn Prize 2003. It will be performed by the NZSO in October 2003, conducted, once again, by Matthias Bamert.
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