Community project with Taranaki Youth Orchestra chosen

Community project with Taranaki Youth Orchestra chosen as the 2018 SOUNZ Community Commission

The winning project for this year’s SOUNZ Community Commission will see composer David Hamilton create a new work to be performed by the Taranaki Youth Orchestra and Taranaki Junior Jay Band, along with the region’s musical community of school choirs and instrumentalists.

The anonymous project donor selected the winning proposal by Jocelyn Beath, the conductor of Taranaki Youth Orchestra, who said:

“It is a great honour and privilege that our proposal has been chosen -- What a wonderful opportunity to work with our young school community, to involve them further in musical activity, to have the great honour to involve them working with one of our foremost composers, David Hamilton, and ultimately to bring to the community a production which further advertises the wonderful work being done by the NEXT foundation to eradicate pests from our Mount Taranaki. This is a very exciting project and an adventure and enlightening journey for us all to undertake.”

The winning project will deal with the theme of the recently announced Taranaki Mounga project, which aims for pest eradication and reintroduction of species all over the Egmont National Park and is a unique conservation venture involving the NEXT Foundation, Department of Conservation (DOC), the local iwi and the Taranaki community.

Through the SOUNZ Community Commission, the local school children will be engaged to write poems about the venture, which will become the text for music to be written by David Hamilton. Next year, the project will culminate in a performance by Taranaki Youth Orchestra and the Taranaki Junior Band, who will be joined by local school choirs and instrumentalists.

“We celebrate the musical diversity in our communities with the SOUNZ Community Commission and this year is no different. Engaging regional communities with New Zealand's composers to create and perform a work together is at the heart of this project. We look forward to hearing the new work next year, to be created by David Hamilton, involving so many young people from the Taranaki region around this important ecological theme. Once again, our gratitude goes out to the donor for making this project happen,” said SOUNZ Executive Director Diana Marsh.

The SOUNZ Community Commission brings together NZ professional composers and community groups to create and perform a new work. It was established in 1999 and has resulted in works for diverse groups such as a community group for young people with learning disabilities, recorder choir, experimental sound artists and children’s theatre.
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