New NZ music

MEDIA RELEASE

5 June 2007

New NZ music

The sounds of New Zealand today.

The Raroa Music Centre is offering a concert of contemporary New Zealand music on 23 June.

The Centre runs group music classes for primary and intermediate-aged children on Saturday mornings at Raroa Intermediate School.

In what promises to be a musical event, children and musicians at the Centre are presenting new New Zealand works, including specially commissioned works by Wellington-based composers Dylan Lardelli, Philip Brownlee, Jonathon Berkhan and Natalie Howell.

The concert is at 11 am, 23 June in the hall at Raroa Intermediate. It is open to all, and children and their families are welcome.

Up-and-coming, Wellington-based composer Dylan Lardelli has contributed two works. “It’s good for children to be able to see that composers aren’t all European and dead,” he says.

Dylan is a professional guitarist and cellist and has received many scholarships and awards for composition. He currently spends about half of his time composing.

His trio work, Kinderspeel, will be performed by three Centre tutors. The middle section is based on a traditional Dutch folk tune and the outer two sections are called “Clouds” and “Traffic”. One twist in the piece is the way that he has distributed the folk tune among the three players, he explains. It would be more conventional to have it going through the piece as a single line. The other piece, Frederick St Fragment, was inspired by Dylan’s experience of growing up on a street of this name in Hawkes Bay and then spending time living in similarly named Frederick Strasse in Berlin.

“Both pieces are different to usual – where the cello does the base and the violins do the melody; in these it’s more democratic,” Dylan says.

The Centre frequently organises concerts to help children explore musical possibilities, says Centre Supervisor, Sunniva Zoete-West of Ngaio. She says many in the musical community have been keen to be involved with this concert.

“We explore lots of musical styles at the Centre. It is important that children have the opportunity to be involved with contemporary New Zealand music. This is their time, their place and their music.”

The concert will feature adult professional musicians, as well as the Centre’s own orchestra.

END

© Scoop Media