Congratulations to two of our string players who have recently won awards.
Michael Weiss, who has led the cellos on many occasions in the last few years (most recently for the Mozart Requiem concert with the Auckland Youth Choir in December 2011), has been awarded the 2011 Drake Medal in Musicology. Michael is presenting a talk entitled ‘The “Fonte”, “Monte”, and “Ponte” in Eighteenth-century symphonic minuets”’ at the University Music department on March 21 st at 5.30 pm. This talk will explore the manipulation of stock compositional formulae. The medal will be presented to Michael at the conclusion.
Louise Webster, long-standing violinist in the orchestra, was recently presented with the CANZ Trust Fund award by the Composers Association of New Zealand. St Matthews Chamber Orchestra is very familiar with Louise’s work, having performed several of her compositions recently, including ‘Proof against burning’ in 2008 and ‘Learning to nudge the wind’ in 2010. Louise was presented with this award at the CANZ AGM on February 18 th.
Another St Matthews violinist and violist, Alison Talmage, is also a composer, and her composition ‘Raukatauri’ will be premiered by the Auckland Symphony Orchestra in a concert at the Raye Freedman Centre at Epsom Girls Grammar School on Sunday March 4 th. Alison is a music therapist at the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre in Grey Lynn, and the ASO’s concert is a fund-raiser for the centre. Alison writes:
Raukatauri is a short work for flute and string orchestra in two movements, Karanga (Call) and Waiata (Song). In Māori legend Hine Raukatauri, the goddess of flutes and music, is the casemoth, trapped in an elongated cocoon that hangs from many native trees; at night as the breeze blows through the cocoon, the call of the female moth to her lover is heard as a soft, sweet sound. The founder of the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre, singer and songwriter Hinewehi Mohi, named both her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, and the music therapy centre after the ancestress Raukatauri. This piece celebrates the composer’s close ties with the Raukatauri Centre. The relationship between flute and orchestra evokes the communicative potential of music to link therapist and clients in co-created music.