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29 Thank you for the music, Colleen
TESS JAINE
Thank you for the music, Colleen
Colleen Marshall is a central figure in the national celebration of chamber music in Nelson. She tells Tracy Neal they’re putting Covid on the backburner and tuning up once more for a short season of summer concerts in Nelson.
As the waves of Covid began to break on our shores almost two years ago, locking up audiences in their homes and cancelling multiple events, some managed to score a break in the weather.
Last year’s Adam Summer Celebration - a mini version of the internationally renowned Adam Chamber Music Festival went ahead without a hitch, beating another lockdown. The trust which runs the event has been planning since then for this year’s celebration, scheduled to begin next month. Colleen Marshall chairs the Nelson Adam Festival of Chamber Music. She says the support from competent and dedicated trustees has helped the event grow into a large and sophisticated festival, attracting musicians and audiences from around the world.
She says support from New Zealand audiences for last year’s trimmed down Adam Summer Celebration meant it maintained considerable momentum.
“We were astounded. We sold 100 season tickets for the fourday festival within the first two days of the ticket launch. “This time around it’s even more spectacular. It tells us so much about the talent we have in New Zealand but also about the sophistication of music appreciation in Nelson.” The festival had its beginnings in the mid-1990s and has become what Colleen says is a highlight of her life. She says prior to Covid, surveys revealed it brought economic benefits to the region of around $5 million. “It was an early, long-term ambition to turn it into an international festival, to be part of the international circuit and having the name Adam in the title was a great help.” The Nelson City Council is the festival’s principal sponsor, with long-time supporters, the late Denis Adam and his wife Verna Adam as naming rights sponsors through the Adam Foundation.
Its reputation has been upheld through the work and dedication of the festival’s artistic directors, musicians Gillian Ansell and Helene Pohl who curate the programme. Colleen, who was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2014 for her services to the arts, says preparation for the festival has helped ease the loneliness since the death of her husband, former Nelson Mayor Kerry Marshall in March 2020.
Colleen and Kerry were childhood sweethearts, having first met when she was aged 14. She says widowhood is a shock she never anticipated would be so tough.
“It’s been a very lonely time, and I say that straight from my heart, because I’ve really no business feeling lonely. I have my wonderful daughter and family nearby – two minutes away on my electric bike, and my darling son and his family nearby at the Lake (Rotoiti), who I see once a week.
“I’m very fortunate, but I miss Kerry so much because he was such a great friend.”
Colleen and Kerry Marshall at Mackinnon Pass, while hiking the Milford Track in the 1970s.
Kerry Marshall, MBE, was a key figure in local government, which included his tenure as mayor across three territorial authorities: Richmond borough, Tasman District, and Nelson City. Colleen says adapting to single life after so long as a couple has been much harder than she ever imagined. “The change from being a married person to being a single person is huge, it’s a phenomena because society looks at you differently when you’re a single person, and there are many judgements around how you should behave when you become a widow.” Colleen says that in some ways it has also been liberating, opening up new connections she otherwise might not have made.
At the saddest times, she has turned to music.
“It has helped me so much. I have a piano I can thump away on; I’ve been part of the Cathedral Choir; patron of the Civic Choir and the festival keeps me absolutely inspired.” Music has been Colleen’s lifeblood. She was born in Nelson in 1942, lived in Nile Street as a youngster and went to Nelson Central School, but it was her Aunt Gladys, a teacher at Nelson College for Girls and a pianist who got the ball rolling. “She brought her piano when she came to stay with us. She’d play us off to sleep at night. “She had a big influence on our family life.” Colleen was taught to play the pipe organ and conducted a small choir at St John’s Methodist Church in Hardy Street. “It was a hugely supportive congregation. The people were always interested in what we (youngsters) were doing. It was always so affirming.” St John’s is also where Colleen met Kerry, whose family were resolute members of the of the congregation. Kerry’s brother, the late Russell Marshall was a Methodist Minister before entering politics. He married Colleen’s older sister Barbara Watson.
“Kerry and I started going out when I was 16, which was all arranged by Barbara and Russell.” They hadn’t liked the thought of Colleen sitting alone by herself on her birthday, so let Kerry have their car. “It was a funny little old Morris 8 in which he took me off to a dance on my birthday, but I’m a little ashamed to say I was brought home by someone else, in his father’s Jag.” Two weeks later, there was another dance. The pair became an item, leading to a 56-year marriage, after Colleen’s time away at teacher training college in Christchurch. She had initially aimed for a career in radio, after gaining a cadetship with what was then Radio Nelson.
“I did a year of the four-year cadetship. I missed all my friends who had gone to Wellington or Christchurch, and by the end of that year I realised I really wanted to become a teacher.” Colleen graduated to become a primary school teacher, completed music exams, and scored a part time job teaching at Nelson College for Girls. “I finished a degree when I was there and eventually became the school’s Head of Music.”
Colleen says music is the one and only universal language, capable of touching everyone directly, without any intermediary. “It expresses the human condition - it’s something I couldn’t live without. It’s the joy it provides, and it’s also an appreciation of what it takes to produce a beautiful sound; what it takes to write a beautiful composition. “The architectural structure of a symphony is just phenomenal. All of that just captured my imagination and amazed me.”
JAMES DAVIES
NZTrio and preforming at this year's Adam Summer Celebration.
Colleen says it’s extraordinary how musical notes originated to translate the meaning of sound. For that, we have monks to thank, who sang plainsong (sacred chants) in monasteries many hundreds of years ago and devised a way to notate it so it could be interpreted by a reader. “That’s how it evolved which is magic, really.” Colleen says despite her devotion to classical music, she’s not above being moved by a modern tune, and has enjoyed directing a number of musicals. “If it’s good, I’ll listen to it. If it’s repetitive, noisy and not well structured, well, I’m not interested.
“I’ve been called a musical snob, and I am, but that’s because I like quality. If you listen to the Beatles, that’s quality, because they knew about music.” Colleen says they’ve learned to build Covid into planning, with plenty of contingency, and just for a few days in February, they hope to be able to forget it, and just listen to the music. “We’re so proud of this festival. We’re proud of the fact it’s Nelson, that we have the refurbished Nelson Centre for Musical Arts to accommodate it, that it generates an economic boost to the region; that we can introduce people to the beauty of Nelson, and we can give them this wonderful musical experience.”
The Adam Summer Celebration takes place from 3-6 February at the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts
