Making Trans-Tasman Music

Making Trans-Tasman Music

Composition of a new Trans-Tasman work has begun this week as the NZTrio and Australian Stuart Greenbaum work together in Auckland.

Greenbaum is the recipient of the 2009 Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange, a joint project of the Australian Music Centre and SOUNZ, the Centre for New Zealand Music. Scilla Askew, Executive Director of SOUNZ explains: “In alternating years the AMC and SOUNZ facilitate a pairing of a composer from one country and a performing organisation or ensemble from the other. As a result performers and their audiences come to know music from across the Tasman and the composer works towards creating a piece particularly for them.”

Each morning this week Greenbaum is working with the NZTrio (Sarah Watkins – piano; Justine Cormack – violin; Ashley Brown ¬–cello) as well as meeting with other composers, performers and students and presenting a seminar at the School of Music at NICAI, Auckland University. The NZTrio have programmed 800 Million Heartbeats, a work by Greenbaum, in their Howick concert on 29 October, and the composer intends to compose a new work for the ensemble to perform both in Australia and New Zealand early next year.

“I’ve been following the Trans-Tasman Exchange project for some years with great interest," Greenbaum says. "In recent years I’ve started writing piano trios and the opportunity to work with the NZTrio was too good to pass up. It’s great to have the opportunity this week to hear them play and talk with them ‘informally’ about the art of the piano trio in such a concentrated way.”

In previous years the Trans-Tasman Composers Project have seen collaborations between Gareth Farr (NZ) and The Song Company (Aus), James Ledger (Aus) and the Christchurch Symphony (NZ), James Gardner (NZ) and ELISION (Aus), Colin Bright (Aus) and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (NZ), and Kenneth Young (NZ) and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

ENDS