Farr: Warriors From Pluto by Promethean Editions

GARETH

FARR WARRIORS FROM PLUTO NZSO CHAMBER ORCHESTRA MARC DECIO TADDEI STRIKE DEBORAH WAI KAPOHE

GARETH WATKINS

Philip Clairmont, Self Portrait at Seventeen (1967), acrylic on hessian, 1140 x 780 mm. Gibbs Collection. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Philip Clairmont.

Gareth Farr

While Philip Clairmontâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings are often excoriating acts of self-scrutiny, they are also highly refined explorations of the Expressionist tradition as embodied by Francis Bacon and later Max Beckman. Although this work dates from Clairmontâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s early years at the Ilam School of Art, his predilection for a heightened palette, his interest in the dramatic, attenuated forms of the Expressionist painters and his desire to transmute observed detail into an emotively charged painted image are clearly visible.

Naga Baba NZSO Chamber Orchestra Marc Decio Taddei Donald Armstrong VIOLIN SOLO

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Te Parenga Patrick Barry SOLO CLARINET NZSO Chamber Orchestra Marc Decio Taddei

Warriors from Pluto STRIKE NZSO Chamber Orchestra Marc Decio Taddei

Nga Tai Hurihuri Deborah Wai Kapohe SOPRANO Aroha Priest KAIKARANGA STRIKE

Time and Tide NZSO Chamber Orchestra Marc Decio Taddei Donald Armstrong VIOLIN SOLO Jeremy Fitzsimons MARIMBA SOLO MMT2036 Digital Stereo Recording g 2001 HRL Morrison Music Trust h 2001 HRL Morrison Music Trust

GARETH

FARR WARRIORS FROM PLUTO

Gareth Farr Gareth Farr is amongst the most versatile and successful composers of contemporary music working in New Zealand today. He is well known to different audiences as a composer, a skilled percussionist, and as a stunning drag artist. Farr was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and he studied composition, orchestration and electronic music at Auckland University. During this time he was a regular player with the Auckland Philharmonia and the Karlheinz Company. Further study followed at Victoria University of Wellington, where he came to prominence with compositions that often employed or were influenced by the Indonesian gamelan orchestra. He played frequently as a percussionist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra before departing New Zealand to study composition with Christopher Rouse at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York, where he graduated Master of Music. In 1993, at the age of 25, Gareth became Chamber Music New Zealandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s youngest composer-in-residence. Since then, his works have been commissioned and performed by the NZSO, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Wellington Sinfonia, the New Zealand String Quartet, and a variety of other professional musicians in New Zealand and overseas. From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs, a commission from the NZSO to commemorate the orchestraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 50th anniversary, was premiered at a Gala Concert in March 1997.

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 (native 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 combining a Maori kapa haka (performing arts) group with the full symphony orchestra.

More information about Gareth Farr can be found at:

www.garethfarr.com Other releases by the HRL Morrison Music Trust of music by Gareth Farr can be found at:

www.trustcds.com

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Gareth Farr Owhiro

Gareth Farr Chamber Music

Gareth Farr Orchestral Music

Gareth Farr Te Papa

STRIKE NZ Percussion Music

Naga Baba

(1997)

The Naga Baba are one of the more extreme sects of the Hindu religion in India. Worshippers of Shiva, they wander from village to village, naked but for a covering of ash.They have no possessions, and depend on the alms of the villagers who lay food out for them, motivated partly by respect, partly by fear. Naga Baba is inspired by the silent austerity of these holy men. In the piece, I have made musical analogies to the process of transformation whereby the identity of an individual is subsumed into a larger group mentality.This is most obviously represented in the way the assertions of independence made by the solo violin are gradually overcome by the rest of the orchestra. For the Naga Baba, the transformation is a seven-year initiation and learning process, culminating in a ritual period of meditation and jungle retreat.This concludes in a ceremony whereby the candidate must prove his total devotion to Shiva.Whilst he is meditating and focusing on a mantra, a red-hot piece of iron in plunged through his ear. Flinching or uttering a sound is an indication that he is not yet ready, and death or madness is the ultimate sign that the candidate was unfit to serve the Lord Shiva. Naga Baba was commissioned by the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra with funding assistance from Creative New Zealand, to celebrate the orchestra’s 10th anniversary.

Gareth Farr

Te Parenga

(2000)

“I invite you to join me in a voyage into the past, to that territory of the heart we call childhood.” Bruce Mason’s one-man play The End of the Golden Weather is the story of a 1930s summer spent by the sea, seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. It is one of

the most popular and enduring works of New Zealand theatre, conveying as it does something of the nostalgia shared by most New Zealanders for childhood holidays spent at the beach. Bruce Mason performed the work nearly 1000 times over two decades from 1959, in towns and cities throughout the country, but it was not until 2000 that the play was professionally revived in a performance by Peter Vere-Jones. Gareth Farr composed incidental music for the production, and later expanded this material into a four-movement suite for clarinet and strings with harp and percussion. The title, Te Parenga, is Mason’s name for the fictionalised Auckland beachfront suburb of Takapuna where the play is set.

Thomas Liggett

Warriors from Pluto

(2000)

The inspiration to write Warriors From Pluto originally came from a suggestion that I write an eighth movement for Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, which had been composed before Pluto’s discovery. Just after I began, I found out that the English composer Colin Matthews had been commissioned to write a ‘Pluto’ for the same reason, and that this was currently being premiered in Britain. So I decided to change the focus of the piece; instead of an Earthling’s view of what Pluto might be like, this is a Plutan’s vision of the planet Earth.The Plutan’s ideas of the space age are similar to mine – I’ve always loved 1950s ideas of the space age, where in the design of a spacecraft, looking good was a higher priority than apparent functionality. It all seems much more glamorous and fun than the reality we have found ourselves with. [MISSING SENTENCE] In this recording, STRIKE are the best and bravest warriors of the Queendom of Pluto, sent to research the oddly beautiful and distant planet Earth.

Gareth Farr STRIKE: Stephen Bremner, Jeremy Fitzsimons, Murray Hickman, Kristie Ibrahim, Tim Whitta

Nga Tai Hurihuri

(2001)

Nga Tai Hurihuri was a commission by the New Zealand arm of Accenture to commemorate its re-branding.The brief for the commission was to create a work expressing renewal through the new ways of doing things working in partnership with the old.The work was written especially for the operatic soprano voice of Deborah Wai Kapohe and kaikaranga Aroha Priest – the soprano metaphorically representing the new ways and the kaikaranga representing the old. As well as including solo marimba, maracas, bongos, cymbals and tamtam, the percussion set-up includes two stations of tom-toms arranged in a mirror image of one another to exploit the choreographic potential of two drummers playing in unison. The work received its first performance at the official launch of Accenture at Downstage Theatre,Wellington on 25 January 2001.

Thomas Liggett Nga Tai Hurihuri KUPU: E rere ra nga moemoea Ki runga te moana Tangihia nga putatara I te rangi – te rangi

The Changing Tides TEXT: My dreams travel swiftly Across the ocean Whilst heavenly trumpets cry out From far above

Kei hea ra nga tipuna I whakawhiti taonga I nga ra o mua Ki nga iwi o te ao

Where have all our ancestors gone Who traded precious goods In days gone by To the peoples of the world?

Tiro noa ki pamamao Heke mai nga roimata Ka pu te ruha Ka hao te rangatahi – Aue!

I gaze outwards into the distance And my tears fall to the ground As the old net is cast aside And a new era begins

Puta mai noa ra te maramatanga e Ka ao hou ka awatea Ki te whai ao e Me hoki wairua e

But then appears the spreading light of life It is a new sunrise – lo, a new era is born It is a new world of light and technology But still the memories of old will return

KARANGA: Hoki wairua mai nga taonga o nga matua tipuna Kua ngaro i te po Haere mai! Haere mai! Hoki mai ra e!

CHANT: Return O precious gifts of our illustrious ancestors Who have been lost to us through time I bid you welcome! Return!

Text and translation ÂŠ 2001 Te Taite Cooper

STRIKE: Stephen Bremner, Jeremy Fitzsimons, Murray Hickman, Kristie Ibrahim, Tim Whitta

Time and Tide

(2001)

Duggan was a television police-drama series in which Detective Inspector John Duggan (played by John Bach) was given grisly murder cases to solve, set against the scenic backdrop of New Zealandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Marlborough Sounds. Gareth Farr composed music for the two pilot episodes in 1997 and 1998, and the 11 one-hour episodes made subsequently. Time and Tide is based on themes extracted from the music for the series, and features prominent parts for solo violin and marimba. As might be expected, given the subject nature of the television series, much of the music is tense and dark-hued, although contrast is provided in expansive tutti passages evocative of the majestic sweep and grandeur of the Marlborough Sounds.

Thomas Liggett

Deb orah Wai Kapohe Born in Winton and educated at Otago and Auckland Universities, Deborah Wai Kapohe continues her international career to ongoing critical acclaim, summed up so aptly by Troy Lennan in the Sydney Daily Telegraph: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Wai Kapohe has been called the next Kiri Te Kanawa but she is an individual talent who deserves her own star statusâ&#x20AC;?. After a number of prestigious private performances in London including at the installation of Sir Alan Traill as Master of the Worshipful Company of Musicians at the Guildhall, Deborah made her public London debut in the Cathcart Spring Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in June 2001. Deborah has performed with all the professional Opera Companies in New Zealand, as well as OzOpera, Opera Australia and Chamber Made in Australia. Already recognised as an outstanding talent, Deborah is in significant demand in New Zealand, regularly appearing in arts festivals, opera, concerts and recitals. Deborah Wai Kapohe is proudly sponsored by Accenture.

Patrick Barr y At 24, Patrick Barry is the youngest member of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Born in Washington State, he took up the position of Associate Principal Clarinet in 2000. He is a recent graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with David Neuman and Luis Baez. During his studies, Patrick had the opportunity to perform with members of the San Francisco Symphony and the

remaining members of the Grateful Dead in a performance of John Cageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s music circus Renga with Apartment House 1776. He was also involved with the debut performance of the Lawrence Peck Dance Company, a modern dance troupe committed to collaboration with living composers. Patrick was winner of the 1994 Corbett Concerto Competition, and in 1997 he was awarded a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Centre.

STR I K E STRIKE is a high-energy drumming group made up of New Zealand's most outstanding percussionists. Founded in 1993, STRIKE is committed to developing the unique and diverse world of New Zealand percussion music, actively commissioning and performing works by leading New Zealand composers. STRIKE has also ventured into exploration of the theatrical and physical aspects of percussion, leading to the development of a movement-based show, Cube.This was premiered at the 1999 Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, and later seen at the New Zealand International Festival 2000 and the Cervantino Festival, Mexico in 2001. Following the critically-acclaimed season of Gareth Farrâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smashing Sweet Vixen with the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 1998, STRIKE have gained a greater profile at home and overseas. Recent projects have included a European tour in November 2000, seasons of their new stage show in Wellington, Auckland and Hamilton, and the 2001 Cervantino Festival, Gunajuato, Mexico. More information about STRIKE can be found at:

www.strike.co.nz

Marc De cio Taddei One of New Zealandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most dynamic conductors, Marc Decio Taddei is the Music Director of the Christchurch Symphony, Associate Conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia, and Music Director of New Zealandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premier modern music group, the 20th Century Classics Ensemble. He holds the positions of Head of Orchestral Repertoire Studies and Artist Teacher of Conducting at Victoria University of Wellington, and is the Music Director of the Wellington Youth Orchestra. Marc has conducted in Europe and North America, and is a frequent guest conductor with every major professional orchestra in New Zealand. He is noted for his interpretations of the Germanic and late-Romantic repertoire and is a keen advocate of the Second Viennese School. In addition to his work with the 20th Century Classics Ensemble, which has presented the New Zealand premieres of many 20th century masterpieces, Marc has also been an advocate of contemporary New Zealand composers. He has recorded New Zealand works with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and has conducted the vital Auckland Philharmonia Composer workshops annually since 1997.

N Z S O Chamb er Orchestra The NZSO Chamber Orchestra (formerly the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra) was founded in 1987 with leading players from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Since then it has established itself as New Zealand's premier chamber orchestra.The orchestra generally performs without a conductor, directed instead from the first violin chair by Music Director Donald Armstrong.

The orchestra has toured throughout New Zealand over the past 13 years, and increasingly abroad. Highlights have included acclaimed performances at EXPO in Seville in 1992, and an engagement by Musica Viva, Australia, as Orchestra in Residence at the prestigious Mittagong Festival, NSW, in 1993. The NZSO Chamber Orchestra performs regularly with distinguished international soloists, and many of New Zealand's finest artists have joined the orchestra in concert, including pianist Michael Houstoun, tenor Patrick Power, flutist Alexa Still, and the New Zealand String Quartet. In 1996 Dame Malvina Major, Helen Medlyn and Deborah Wai Kapohe made their debuts with the orchestra, and in 1997 the bass Paul Whelan came home to New Zealand for his first tour with the orchestra. The NZSO Chamber Orchestra has produced a catalogue of fine CDs, including Douglas Lilburn's Landfall in Unknown Seas narrated by Sir Edmund Hillary, the music of Richard Rodney Bennett, and the world premiere recording of the complete Johann Stamitz Orchestral Trios released in late 1995. In 2000 they recorded Brittenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and other Britten works for the Australian label Artworks Ltd. The NZSO Chamber Orchestra is a division of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Other releases by the HRL Morrison Music Trust with the NZSO Chamber Orchestra can be found at:

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Keith Lewis Opera kings, gods and mortals

Accenture Accenture is very proud to be sponsoring the production of this CD. We have a strong commitment to supporting the arts, cultural events, theatre companies, and sporting events worldwide â&#x20AC;&#x201C; particularly where innovation and high performance is key to dynamic delivery. We believe these events highlight that extraordinary human achievement is possible when knowledge, skill and intellect all work together in the pursuit of excellence.They also fit well with Accenture's own values and the way we deliver superior results to our clients. Sponsorship of the arts also provides Accenture the opportunity to give something back to the communities, both in New Zealand and globally, that we depend on for our continued success. Ths is why Accenture commissioned Gareth Farr to produce Nga Tai Hurihuri, and why we looked to the collective talents of Gareth, Deborah Wai Kapohe, STRIKE and Aroha Priest. The result â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a stunning piece of music, which can now be enjoyed by everyone. Accenture congratulates Gareth Farr and HRL Morrison Music Trust on an excellent production.

Jack Percy, Managing Partner About Accenture Accenture is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading provider of management and technology consulting services and solutions. We help our clients identify and capitalise on their most important business and technology opportunities, and we provide solutions to their most critical challenges. Our approach is to create value for clients through our network of businesses by leveraging our industry knowledge, service offering expertise and insight into and access to emerging technologies.

Recorded in the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, New Zealand, 29-31 January 2001. Producer Gareth Farr Co-Producer Ross Hendy Recording Engineer, Digital Editing & Mastering Richard Hulse, Radio New Zealand Executive Producer Ross Hendy Booklet Editor Thomas Liggett Design Mallabar Music Thanks to Jenny Gibbs, Keith Warren, Jamie Bull, Aroha Priest, Rachel Power, Tracy Dillimore

ALL RIGHTS OF THE PRODUCER AND OF THE OWNER OF THE WORK REPRODUCED RESERVED. UNAUTHORISED COPYING, HIRING, LENDING, PUBLIC PERFORMANCE AND BROADCASTING OF THIS RECORD PROHIBITED. The HRL Morrison Music Trust was established in March 1995 as a charitable trust to support New Zealand musicians of international calibre. All funds received by the Trust are used to make recordings, present concerts – both in New Zealand and overseas – and assist artists to undertake projects to further develop their talents. The HRL Morrison Music Trust gratefully acknowledges the support of the following organisations in the making of this recording: Radio New Zealand Wellington Convention Centre NZSO Chamber Orcherstra STRIKE Accenture

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www.trustcds.com Performance materials for all the works on this recording are available from Promethean Editions:

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Naga Baba