New Zealand Youth Choir is Northland Bound: The nation’s best young voices will sing at Waitangi 2025

The New Zealand Youth Choir (NZYC) is heading to Northland for two public concerts – at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds as part of the official Waitangi Day ceremony and at the Whangārei Boys High School auditorium on Saturday, 8 February. Under the direction of David Squire, NZYC gathers New Zealand’s finest young voices aged 18–25; there are currently 50 members from all over Aotearoa. Tenor Riley Rolton is excited to be returning to his old stomping ground, and soprano Tess Dalgety-Evans says singing at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds will have special meaning for her.

Riley Rolton, from Whangārei and Coopers Beach, is delighted to be returning to Northland. He has previously performed in his home territory while on tour with the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir when he was a student at St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton. Riley is now studying graphic design at Waikato Institute of Technology.

Wellington’s Tess Dalgety-Evans works with the nation’s founding documents as an educator, and earlier this year she hosted the entire youth choir on its visit to the He Tohu exhibition at National Library. The choir also performed in the space, “We ended with all 50+ of us singing inside the rimu heart-shaped document room. He Tohu is a long-term exhibition at Te Puna Mātauranga National Library of New Zealand that houses the original sheets of Te Tiriti o Waitangi 1840, alongside He Whakaputanga (the Declaration of Independence) 1835 and the Women’s Suffrage Petition 1893,” says Tess who feels that standing at Waitangi “will only deepen those hononga (connections) as we mihi to the nation through song; kia whakamana te whenua, kia whakamana te tangata”.

Acclaimed composer Tuirina Wehi (Ngāti Ruapani) will also be in Northland with the New Zealand Youth Choir – to teach them her new waiata composed especially for the choir. NZYC is getting ready to travel to Europe to compete in Aarhus, Denmark, for the Grand Prix of Nations before returning to the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod in Wales, where they previously won “Choir of the World” in 1999. The last time NZYC was in Europe in 2016, they sang another of Tuirina's compositions, “Waerenga-a-Hika” (arranged by Robert Wiremu), and won the Grand Prix at the 2016 IFAS in the Czech Republic. NZYC has launched a Give-a-little page to support their 2025 European tour and ensure no singer is left behind.

In between the public concerts on 6th at the treaty grounds and the 8th in Whangārei, NZYC will spend much of Friday the 7th working with students at One Tree Point School. During the day of the 8th, the choir will ‘pop up’ for a performance at the Whangārei market.

NZ Youth Choir in Northland

10am & 1pm, Thursday 6 February, 2025

Waitangi Treaty Grounds

6pm, Saturday 8 February, 2025

Whangārei Boys’ High School auditorium

Adults $25, Seniors $15, Students $10, children $1. Book now: nzyouthchoir.com/events

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