Colourful and Unusual Music Combination Tours

Colourful and Unusual Music Combination Tours to Seven NZ Centres in March

Acclaimed New Zealand pianist Diedre Irons is joined by two musical friends in a new trio, Galvanised for a seven-centre Chamber Music New Zealand tour.

Galvanised performs concerts in Palmerston North, Napier, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Nelson and Invercargill from 2-9 March to launch Chamber Music New Zealand’s 2013 ‘Kaleidoscopes’ season, with a special pre-season concert in Wanganui on Friday 1 March.

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Featuring Diedre on piano with Deborah Rawson on saxophone and Rebecca Steel on flute, Galvanised is one of the most colourful – and unusual – combinations in all chamber music.

“Debbie, Rebecca and I have been wanting to play together for years,” says Diedre. “We’re delighted to finally be all in the same country so that we can – and we’re having an immense amount of fun with this music. They are just gorgeous jewels of pieces, all of them, and the combination of flute and sax and piano produces something unique and really special.”

The three friends leapt at the opportunity to play together when Rebecca Steel, former Principal Flute with the Philharmonia in London, returned from Australia where she had a busy freelance career with the major orchestras and her wind quintet, The Chambermaids.

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Debbie Rawson, Head of Woodwind at the New Zealand School of Music, is well known as the leader of the saxophone group Saxcess; while Diedre Irons needs little introduction to New Zealand audiences, arriving here from Canada in the 1970s, she combined teaching with performing, and left her latest post as Head of Classical Performance at the NZSM to enjoy an increasingly busy international concert career.

The six concerts feature a programme of pieces showing composers in their wittiest and most extravagant moods. From the extraordinary Two Fantastics from Takács, one of the collaborators on the film Dracula, to the unashamed romance of Marc Eychenne with Shostakovich at his most tuneful and humorous, Poulenc’s famous flute sonata, and Shtiklekh (Morsel), a new Klezmer-style work commissioned from New Zealand composer Ross Harris.

Galvanised, featuring Diedre Irons, performs in seven New Zealand centres from Friday 1 March to Saturday 9 March. For more information visit www.chambermusic.co.nz

Chamber Music New Zealand acknowledges major funding from Creative New Zealand.

ENDS

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