Concert brings the icy continent to Wellington

Concert brings the icy continent to Wellington

“Music as crystalline and expansive as the continent, and as poignant and heartfelt as our tragic history with ‘The Ice’.”

That is how Norman Meehan, composer, pianist and Head of Jazz at New Zealand School of Music (NZSM) describes These Rough Notes a cycle of songs evoking the icy continent and acknowledging the tragedies of the ill-fated Robert Scott expedition and Erebus air disaster.

“Poet Bill Manhire and photographer Anne Noble have each visited Antarctica and experienced the reality of human interaction with that harsh, unforgiving environment,” Meehan explains. “They each, through their own artforms, expressed that relationship and these poems and images were the inspiration and source behind my songs. Together with singer Hannah Griffin I have sought to express that relationship with Antarctica in music.”

The songs, together with some of Noble’s images and readings of Manhire’s poems, will be performed in four concerts at Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre over the weekend of 6 and 7 October 2012.

“It is the Scott expedition which, through Bill’s words, has led to the name of the cycle,” Meehan continues. “When the bodies of Robert Falcon Scott and his fellow polar explorers were found on the Antarctic ice 100 years ago this November, among the last words written in his diary were these…

'Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale . . .’.

The performances, through words, images and music, certainly go some way towards ‘telling the tale’, but they also bring us into the modern era.

The project is not just a collaboration of art forms, it is a collaboration between top-flight academics in their own ‘realms’: Manhire a Professor of Literature at Victoria University, Noble a Professor of Fine Arts at Massey and Meehan an Associate Professor at NZSM,which is a joint initiative of both Victoria and Massey.

“It has been a real pleasure to work together with Bill, Anne and Hannah,” Meehan acknowledges. “I hope that, through these concert performances, the audience will participate in this extraordinary power of art to transmute personal experience into shared perspectives that take us beyond physical realities into the realm of human spirit and endeavour.”

The poems, images and CD of the songs have also been published by Victoria University Press under the same title – a beautiful and poignant record of this very special collaboration between artists. Thebook/CD These Rough Notes was launched at a similar performance at Christchurch’s Icefest in late September and the musicians have also been invited to perform the cycle at the Frankfurt Book Fair in mid-October.

These Rough Notes will be the third CD collaboration between Manhire, Meehan and Griffin: two previous albums – Buddhist Rain and Making Baby Float – were also the result of the musicians’ setting of the poet laureate’s words to music, some of the poems written specifically for this purpose.

Professor Bill Manhire is retiring head of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.

Professor Anne Noble is in the School of Fine Arts at Massey University of New Zealand

Associate Professor Norman Meehan is Head of the Jazz Programme at NZSM.

Hannah Griffin, graduate of NZSM, is working for Radio New Zealand.

These Rough Notes

Saturday 6 October: 4:00pm qnd 7:00pm,

Sunday 7 October: 2:00pm and 7:00pm

Booking online through Eventfinder: Adults: $19, Seniors/Students $10

Remaining tickets at the door: Adults: $25 online, Seniors/Students $12

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