New Zealand Composers and Collaboration |
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The word "collaborate" means to work together.
Many New Zealand composers have worked collaboratively with artists and people in other arts related areas. These areas and artists include poetry and poets, film and filmmakers, dance and dancers, choreographers, and bicultural or multicultural collaborations.
Some collaborative procedures are more interactive between the two artists and art forms than others. For example, a poet may approach a composer and ask the composer to write music to his or her poems, or to write music underneath speaking of the poems. A recent example of the latter (music composed to accompany the narration of the poems) is "The Poems of Lauris Buchanan Edmond" in which the poet approached Dorothy Buchanan to compose music for a CD of Lauris's poetry, read by Lauris and her daughter, Frances Edmond.
This process is an interactive collaboration. Other less active collaborations may include: a composer setting a poet's words to music, without an interactive dialogue or process between the two artists. A recent example of this collaboration is Baxter - a gathering of ten New Zealand composers of all kinds of music - rock, pop, serious - who each selected a poem by James K. Baxter (who died in 1972) that was performed at the International Festival of the Arts in Wellington in 2000. Obviously, if the poet is no longer living, the collaboration of words and music is non-interactive.
However, the fact that ten diverse New Zealand composers worked together to produce the show "Baxter", created a collaborative process of its own.
Let's take another example: a filmmaker approaches a composer to write music for a film. Some filmmakers have very clear ideas of what kind of music should be used according to their vision of the film. This involves both artists in a close collaborative association. It will almost certainly mean that the composer will need to come up with more than one idea for the music; and in one or two cases, the composer and their music is rejected altogether for the film. The collaboration just didn't work.
The opposite scenario to the above example is where one artist approaches the composer and trusts the composer to come up with suitable music, without very tight requirements. The composer will then very probably seek more information from the other person, and thus the collaborative process evolves.
Every collaboration is unique, but as we will see from the nine composers selected under this topic, collaboration is a wonderful and challenging experience in the life of a composer.
Buchanan, Dorothy. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators.
Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Jack Body
Collaborations are seldom easy affairs. I guess it's like getting married, except that marriage allows, indeed requires a lot longer time to 'work things out'. The important thing is to begin with respect for the other person and their work, and also a preparedness to compromise. When collaboration works well, two (or more minds) can create something more rich and interesting than a single vision. Over the years I've collaborated with various artists from other media including theatre, dance and film. But in my experience one of the most problematic collaborations is music for film. In a feature film the director is God. And there is a good reason for this. Film requires the input of generally hundreds, and sometimes thousands of skilled collaborators actors, set designers, lighting designers, cinematographers, etc etc. The composer of the film score is only one of the whole army of contributors to what, finally, must come out as the 'vision' of the director. A composer of the film score might think what he or she has written suits the film perfectly, but if the director doesn't agree then it must be done again, and again, and again until the director is satisfied. Not an easy lesson for a composer to learn!
Body, Jack. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Dorothy Buchanan
Each experience of collaboration is unique. Sometimes it is a very equal experience, whereby the person I am collaborating with will contribute opinions, ideas, plans and performance outcomes equal to my input.
A good example of that is my experience with Jeremy Commons who wrote the libretti (opera scripts) for 'The Mansfield Stories'. What a great experience that collaboration has been! Both Jeremy and I were able to be flexible in terms of me adapting or asking for more words; me being flexible and working within the time framework of each opera - about thirty - thirty five minutes each one; both of us understanding the importance of working within a strict budget, and creating our best artistic effort within those parameters.
Then there is another quite different collaborative experience that will always be one of the most special experiences of my life as a composer. For the past 10 years I have collaborated on many projects with the poet Lauris Edmund. Lauris left much of the music input to me - but our discussions, our philosophies, our life experiences led us to a great friendship begun from collaboration. Lauris died at the beginning of 2000.
I feel very lucky to have had many wonderful collaborations; and for the special friendships that many of them have formed.
Buchanan, Dorothy. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Gareth Farr
Gareth Farr is one of New Zealand's most popular and colourful composers. In his music, which often features percussion instruments he often involves himself as a performer. He is also a performer in his other "persona", Lilith.
Gareth's collaborations are numerous. They include music for Witi Ihimaera's play, "Woman Far Walking"; Baxter; and music for the TV series, Duggan. He has been involved in several bi-cultural projects, one of which was featured in Sydney in 2000, called Hikoi.
Helen Fisher
A quiet, solitary space is what I need most when I am actually composing. Nevertheless, I do value the collaboration experiences that inform many of my compositions. "Te Tangi A Te Mātūī" (1986) my first major composition, is one example. For this solo flute and voice piece, several people made important contributions: first, I consulted Teariki Mei, my te reo Māori teacher, about including in an appropriate way the traditional Māori karakia; the flute player, Joanne Averill, and I explored a range of flute techniques; Tiahuia Gray assisted Joanne's pronunciation of Māori language; and finally, the Ngāti Pōneke whānau approved my composition when Joanne played the piece at Pipitea Marae.
Working closely with poet Lauris Edmond over a few years for both "Taku Wana - The Enduring Spirit" (1997) and also "The Wheel Turns", Lauris and I met several times to discuss a wide range of her poems. When I eventually selected seven, Lauris entrusted me to rearrange some of the verses or to use only extracts to suit the shape of the song cycle. Listening often to a tape recording Lauris made for me, where she excessively recites these poems, influenced my selection of sounds for soprano, flute, cello and piano. A couple of meetings Lauris had with Lesley Graham, the soprano who commissioned the work, where Lauris shared insights about these poems were a valuable aid to Lesley's vocal interpretation. When it came time to print the poems in the score and programme notes, I needed to ensure that Lauris was satisfied with every detail. 30 September 1999 marked a special occasion, the premiere performance. It also celebrated the trust and friendship among poet, composer and performer.
Other people who have collaborated in my composing processes are performers such as Catherine Bowie (flute), Richard Nunns (kōauau), Kanzan Sato (shakuhachi) and the New Zealand String Quartet, Kapa Haka performers such as Te Waka Hūia, choreographers and artistic directors (for example, Rangimoana Taylor, Merenia Gray, Jan Bolwell, Sunny Amey and Keri Kaa, Susan Jordan), other composers such as Wi Kuki Kaa, Ngapo and Pimia Wehi, and conductors such as Karen Grylls and Rita Paczian.
The most satisfying collaboration happens when good human relationships combine with artistic professionalism. It becomes a creative team's journey together into the unknown. It can be quite an adventure, which is made enjoyable by mutual respect, good communication and teamwork skills, by an openness and willingness to learn from one other and by being able to give and take, in order to achieve a balance of artistic elements and maintain an overriding commitment to a shared vision.
For me as a Pākehā composer of Celtic ancestry, this holistic approach is crucial also in my bicultural collaborations with Māori composers, artistic directors, choreographers and performers. Working with these people has challenged some of my earlier Western composition ideas. Over the last twenty years I have come to understand that just to include some Māori elements, for example Māori lyrics or reference to a Māori story, in a composition is an inappropriate and superficial approach. Essential for the integrity of a bicultural composition is the composer's personal commitment to walk alongside Māori, a commitment to a partnership of Tāngata Tiriti with Tāngata Whenua, where one is gradually building up knowledge, understanding and practical experience in the Māori world, where one is working for justice and peace in Aotearoa.
I enjoy being part of a creative team where two or more composers are responsible for one bicultural composition. I have worked this way with Wi Kuki Kaa in "Taku Wana - The Enduring Spirit" (1997) and with Ngāpo and Pīmia Wehi in "Tëtë Kura" (2000). This is where both our music traditions, Māori and European based, are either juxtaposed or intertwined and blended, to form part of an "aural weaving". This is where both music traditions stand tall together, resonating our hopes for a truly bicultural Aotearoa.
Fisher, Helen. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Ross Harris
Bringing together creative minds from different disciplines is exciting and challenging. It is especially so when the collaborations involve artists with different cultural roots. Witi Ihimaera and I worked together on two operas - Waituhi and Tanz der Schwäne (The Dance of the Swans). The libretto of Waituhi was developed from Witi's book Whānau and is the story of Witi's own village and family. Tanz is about an Austrian nurse arriving to live in small town New Zealand shortly after the WWII.
In neither of these operas did I have much initial input into the structure of the librettos. Witi's profound knowledge of opera meant that he often wrote the words for arias and scenes using operatic models from the repertoire as inspiration. I would then use my own musical ideas to set the words. We would then toss the ideas back and forth keeping an ear on the progress of the work. There were many amusing scenes with me trying to sing, play, dance and generally animate the musical score so that Witi would know how things were developing. It was great fun and led me into creative worlds that I certainly would not have reached without the process of collaboration.
Harris, Ross. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Jenny McLeod
In a sense every piece you write is a collaboration. If it is a commission, you are given a brief to fulfil - a certain kind of piece is required for certain specific performers; you collaborate by building your piece according to those specifications. If instrumental and/or vocal or choral, for the piece to be successful you must collaborate first with the propensities and possibilities/impossibilities of the instruments themselves (voice[s] included), and eventually also with the conductor and/or performers; if electronic, with the machines; if for film, with the time code, the images, shot lengths, and situations, etc, to say nothing of the director and producer.
Creative collaboration with other individuals can be not only a fertile source of inspiration, it may also be quite challenging to one's ego (which I generally found was good for me). The preferences/aptitudes of others must be taken into account as well as one's own, and so must their temperaments and personalities. Sometimes you may even be working with people from another culture, and there will be all sorts of other musical/spiritual customs and ramifications of which at first you are not necessarily even very conscious and which you may sometimes still find quite perplexing even after many years.
What will carry one through all the collective difficulties:
Sometimes the collaborative partnership can be so close it is almost like a "marriage", when you know each other so well you can predict responses and virtually read each other's mind (and thus can also build on each other's strengths and sidestep the weaknesses). Peter Tulloch and I had this sort of relationship in his direction and choreographing of Earth and Sky (in Masterton and Tauranga) and Under the Sun (in Palmerston North).
McLeod, Jenny. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Philip Norman
Collaborative ventures form a substantial part of my output as a composer. I count myself fortunate to have experienced a number of successful artistic partnerships, with three in particular - Russell Kerr (choreographer), Roger Hall (playwright), and AK Grant (writer) spanning almost two decades.
The opportunity to work at such close quarters with these talented artists has given me an insight into the creative processes involved in other arts disciplines. This has been both fascinating and rewarding for me.
I have also been fortunate in enjoying very much the company of my collaborators; there have been a lot of laughs and shared enjoyments to alleviate the stress of creating something new. Funnily enough, though, while it helps to get along well with your collaborator, it isn't essential (think of Gilbert and Sullivan). What is important is that a bit of magic is sparked in the meeting of minds - that somehow, the finished product, 'the whole', ends up greater than the sum of the parts.
Norman, Philip. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Gillian Whitehead
We know what collaboration is - the pooling of ideas and talents of creative people from different disciplines to produce work which could not be envisaged or carried out by one person alone. Collaboration is partnership, whether it's in the setting of a pre-existing poem, or the writing and staging of an opera. It will only work if there is an overall vision to which everyone can relate, if there is equality of input and mutual respect.
For me, what is really exciting is the process, which at its best involves total trust between participants. It gives insights into the creative world and an understanding of the craft of other people, and can be the basis of enduring friendships.
I've worked on many collaborative projects, but I'll just mention three.
I've worked with the New Zealand writer Fleur Adcock on several projects, and I've worked with her more than with anyone else. As well as straight settings of poems, we've written together three monodramas, all for soprano or mezzo singing with different instrumental ensembles, based on historical characters - Hotspur, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Katherine Mansfield (in Out of Nettle Danger) as well as an opera (The King of the other Country). Fleur has a real gift for writing words that are singable, imaginative as well as memorable.
Ipu is based on a modern Māori story in the tradition of the great Māori teaching legends, written and narrated in the CD version by Tungia Baker. For this project I brought together the skills of a cellist, Georg Pedersen, and two improvising musicians, Judy Bailey, a New Zealand improvising pianist now living in Sydney and Richard Nunns, who is a skilled player of taonga puoru, Māori musical instruments. In the score, the cello part is fully notated, and guidelines are provided for the others. For Judy, these are suggestions of pitch, gesture and mood, for Richard an indication of which instrument to play, and when. In the recording, I directed the performance, in which the written score was text and cello line, with the other voices being called in and out of the texture.
The opera Outrageous Fortune contained many types of collaboration. Firstly, there were the funding implications - how many singers, players, performances: what was the best venue? Then the librettist worked on the story line with the producer, and we worked on details of the text together. When the text was complete I worked on the music, and there was also consultation with the local rūnanga and the Chinese community. The casting was done while I was writing the piece, so that I knew the voice qualities I was looking for. After that, of course, there was consultation with many others - conductor, set designer and constructor, and so on and so on. There needs to be consultation at every step of the way.
I've written more than enough. But I love working collaboratively, because it's a challenge, because it's a risk, and because I've come to know so many fantastic people!
Whitehead, Gillian. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
Charlotte Yates
I am the artistic director of a collaborative project called Baxter, where I invited 12 New Zealand composers - all recording artists with one or more CDs in their own right - to pick a poem by James K Baxter and set it to their music. In essence, the composers were in collaboration with the dead poet. The project had the blessing, care and permission of his estate. Once written, the tracks were recorded as a CD, performed in concerts during the NZ Festival 2000, one track was turned into a music video, and other performances are being planned for 2001. These are the composers and the Baxter poems they did:
I wanted to establish diversity in the project without drowning it in eclecticism. There were collaborations within the list too - composers David Downes and Gareth Farr were matched with performance poets David Eggleton and Sam Hunt. None of these people had worked together before. Some of the composers were quicker than others - very clear about what direction they wanted to take, while others took a while to shake their ideas down, depending on what was happening in their own careers.
Collaboration involves an element of risk - you have to trust the other party enough to try things out together, even when they don't always work the first time. Other people can bring difference and stimulus to your own writing. A real buzz can happen when it works.
I loved working on Baxter because it was exciting, often surprising, and the artists and the Baxter estate were into it. I also got to know artists that I had admired musically, as people. With collaboration, you don't always know quite what is going to happen, but from the reputation of the people I was working with, I was pretty sure something really good would be the result.
Yates, Charlotte. New Zealand composers - Some collaborators. Discover: Te Kohanga Taonga, updated June 29 2002. URL: http://discover.natlib.govt.nz
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