August 10 2004
The Tudor Consort and Gate Seven collaborate on concert of brand new music from home and abroad New works by young New
Zealand composers stand tall in concert of new music
THE TUDOR CONSORT WITH GATE SEVEN ORCHESTRA “SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS”: JAMES MACMILLAN WITH NEW COMPOSITIONS BY
JACK BODY AND VICTORIA UNIVERSITY HONOURS STUDENTS AND “CANTICLES OF LIGHT”: BOB CHILCOTT
MEDIA RELEASE 10-AUG-2004: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Two of Wellington’s premier performing groups are joining forces to present new compositions by emerging New Zealand
composers.
Award-winning chamber choir The Tudor Consort and contemporary instrumental ensemble Gate Seven are collaborating for
the premiere performances of brand new works by honours students in composition from Victoria University, along with the
first New Zealand performance of James MacMillan’s remarkable 1993 cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross.
This exciting performance of brand new music is on Saturday 21 August at 8pm at Sacred Heart Cathedral and will be
recorded live by Concert FM.
Scottish-born MacMillan is “the most exciting young British composer to have emerged in the 1990s” (The Guardian). Seven
Last Words, composed in 1993, is a seven-movement cantata for string orchestra and chamber choir. A remarkably beautiful
work, it is rich with pathos and emotion.
“Seven Last Words is significant because it is the work that put this young Scottish Catholic on the map as an
internationally recognised composer,” says Gate Seven conductor Ewan Clark.
“[This] remarkable cantata … is shocking and consoling, lamenting and uplifting all at once” (The Times [London]).
At the start of the cantata MacMillan limits himself to quite simple musical themes but over the course of the
seven-movement work these simple melodies gradually fracture into a vastly more complicated – and much more passionate –
palette of sound.
The technique is called “deconstruction” and Victoria University composition students James Dunlop, Antonia
Barnett-MacIntosh and Rachel Morgan were assigned a similar challenge by composition tutor Dugal McKinnon: to take
simple themes from pieces of early music and to deconstruct these themes to create brand new art works for voices and
instruments.
“The composers were asked to write music which would refer to and comment on past musical languages, recontextualizing
this material through the lens of the present,” says Clark. “By hearing new works by young emerging composers, the
audience gets an exciting glimpse into the future of New Zealand music.”
The pieces feature two visiting instrumentalists playing very unusual instruments: Japanese performer and composer
Harada Takashi performing on one of the first invented electronic instruments, the ethereal ondes martenot, and
Weeraphong Thaweesak, the crystal-glass virtuoso from Thailand. These two eclectic instruments produce sounds very
similar to the singing voice and are used to great effect in the student pieces and in two new pieces composed
especially for this programme by Professor Jack Body.
While recognised nationally and internationally for its specialist Renaissance performances, The Tudor Consort is quite
at home with the modern repertoire, says the choir’s director, Alastair Carey. “This isn’t the first time The Tudor
Consort has performed brand new works by composers based at Victoria University. The choir gave the premier performance
of Professor Body’s Five Lullabies in 1992; the recording of that performance won Radio Awards both in New Zealand and
in France.”
THE TUDOR CONSORT WITH GATE SEVEN ORCHESTRA “SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS”: JAMES MACMILLAN WITH COMPOSITIONS BY
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY HONOURS STUDENTS AND “CANTICLES OF LIGHT”: BOB CHILCOTT
8pm Saturday 21 August 2004 Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street, Wellington $25 / $15 / $7 / Book online at Ticketek
Visit http://www.tudor-consort.org.nz
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ENDS