Excited to have a gig coming up with my duo AVA & LEOV! Avalon and I will be debuting a few original tunes, playing alongside some fantastic local wāhine songwriters to raise funds for local non-profit Women About Sound.
Friday 4 August, 8pm @ The Nix (6 Nixon Street, Grey Lynn)
Tickets on sale here.
I recently had the privilege of performing at the Auckland Writers Festival Poetry and Music event, held at the Limelight Room in the Aotea Centre on 21 May. This collaborative event featured the shortlisted works of poetry from this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, pairing the four finalist poets with four musicians from the 2023 Ockham Collective.
Working with poet Joanna Cho was a wonderful experience – together we put together a nine-minute performance intertwining two of her poems with original music that I performed on the piano. The event ended up being sold out and it was a really inspiring evening. Watch the video of our performance here (apologies for the recording quality).
You can read more about the event here.
I’m beyond thrilled to share that my recent application for a CNZ Arts Grant, in collaboration with sonic artist Garling Wu, was successful! We will be working together over the next 12 months, composing approximately 40 minutes of genre-bending new music which explores our respective backgrounds in contemporary classical and sonic arts as well as wider musical infuences.
As emerging artists this is a huge milestone in our careers. We put a huge amount of work into the application and we are so grateful to have been given this funding. I’ll be sharing more details as things progress so watch this space.
You can check out the full list of grant recipients here.
Since February I have been leading a project at Pukekohe High School as part of Creatives in Schools; an initiative currently in its fourth year which brings together schools and creatives to deliver inspiring learning experiences for students based around the arts. It’s led by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatū Taonga and Creative New Zealand.
I approached Head of Music Steve Granshaw last year to see if he’d be interested in collaborating on this project and together we came up with a proposal based around a two-term aiming to foster creativity and collaboration through songwriting. In December we found out our proposal was successful which was really exciting. We got off to a rocky start with the flooding in Auckland delaying the start of the school term, but as we’ve gained monentum it’s been rewarding to see the engagement of the students and their commitment to trying something new. In Term Two we’ll start recording their songs which is a process I’m very much looking forward to.
To see the full list of schools taking part in the initiative this year, click here.
Kia ora,
I’m excited to share that my work for piano trio, convergency, is in the running to be performed at the International Symposium of Contemporary Music’s 2023 World New Music Days Festival taking place in South Africa later this year. Six works by NZ-based composers were put forward by CANZ (Composers Association of New Zealand), which is a member organisation of ISCM, and at least one out of the six will be selected to be performed as part of the festival programme.
Fingers crossed that I’ll have some more good news to share when May comes along!