MANTIS: the music of Drew Menzies
2014 JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR finalist

While these recordings are by no means definitive, they are an example of the openness of Drew’s writing, and a fine expression of the respect and enthusiasm with which his music is regarded by the assembled musicians and arrangers. Reuben’s vision for this project was so infectious that each collaborator was willing to freely support the project, and the results speak for themselves – warm, lucid, generous performances, captured and presented with great affection and skill.

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This high-energy piece for percussion and piano is the work that launched my international career, thanks to Evelyn Glennie championing the piece and performing it hundreds of times around the world in the 1990's. It was first played by her in the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington with pianist Philip Smith at the 1992 NZ International Festival of the Arts.

Matre's Dance was commissioned by Jack Body and originally premiered by David Guerin and Bruce McKinnon in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University of Wellington. The first recording of the work is on the inaugural Rattle Records album Different Tracks. Matre's Dance is also one of the only pieces of mine that I've actually played. You can see a low-res video of me and percussionist Murray Hickman, performing the work in 1994: part 1, part 2.

There are many recordings of the piece now, including Evelyn Glennie's Drumming and Greatest Hits. My favourite recording so far is with Stephen Gosling and Jeremy Fitzsimmons.

The title actually confuses two characters in the Frank Herbert Dune series. When writing the program note I was thinking of the Honored Matre's in the 5th and 6th books of the series, whereas the dance I remembered from the books was actually danced by the character Sheena;

Slowly, not wanting to arouse the prostrate priests, Sheeana began the shuffling, unrhythmic movements of the dance. As the remembered music grew within her, she unclasped her hands and swung her arms wide. Her feet lifted high in the stately movements. Her body turned, slowly at first and then more swiftly as the dance ecstasy increased. Her long brown hair whipped around her face. The priests excluded from their attention all except the child. Not the slightest quickly repeatable rhythm entered her movements. There was rhythm but it was an admirably long beat, at least a hundred steps apart. She kept it up while the sun lifted higher and higher. It was almost noon before she fell exhausted to the sand.

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Arranged here for solo percussion and mallet quartet by Omar Carmenates, this high-energy piece originally for percussion and piano is the work that launched my international career, thanks to Evelyn Glennie championing the piece and performing it hundreds of times around the world in the 1990's. It was first played by her in the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington with pianist Philip Smith at the 1992 NZ International Festival of the Arts.

Matre's Dance was commissioned by Jack Body and originally premiered by David Guerin and Bruce McKinnon in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University of Wellington. The first recording of the work is on the inaugural Rattle Records album Different Tracks. Matre's Dance is also one of the only pieces of mine that I've actually played. You can see a low-res video of me and percussionist Murray Hickman, performing the work in 1994: part 1, part 2.

There are many recordings of the piece now, including Evelyn Glennie's Drumming and Greatest Hits. My favourite recording so far is with Stephen Gosling and Jeremy Fitzsimmons.

The title actually confuses two characters in the Frank Herbert Dune series. When writing the program note I was thinking of the Honored Matre's in the 5th and 6th books of the series, whereas the dance I remembered from the books was actually danced by the character Sheena;

Slowly, not wanting to arouse the prostrate priests, Sheeana began the shuffling, unrhythmic movements of the dance. As the remembered music grew within her, she unclasped her hands and swung her arms wide. Her feet lifted high in the stately movements. Her body turned, slowly at first and then more swiftly as the dance ecstasy increased. Her long brown hair whipped around her face. The priests excluded from their attention all except the child. Not the slightest quickly repeatable rhythm entered her movements. There was rhythm but it was an admirably long beat, at least a hundred steps apart. She kept it up while the sun lifted higher and higher. It was almost noon before she fell exhausted to the sand.

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Mentacide, commissioned by Shaun Tilburg and published by Pocket Publications, is for solo snare drum(s) and digital audio, with the accompanying text drawing inspiration from Henry Giroux's 'The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America's Disimagination Machine.'

I have made available - at the store on this site - a bundled product: Mentacide : solo snare drum(s), audio track and optional video

The download includes

• Score PDFs (portrait and landscape option)

• Practice audio tracks with embedded click at 60/70/80/90/100/110/120 BPM

• Performance audio (the backing track and an isolated click for in-ear monitoring)

• A reference mix of the track with snare drum included

• An optional performance video

The performance video (by David Downes) spells out (literally) the words that are being generated in the digital audio (see below for the text).

This text is being recited, letter-by-letter by a child's toy (now a sample plug-in). A sound I remember from my early years. When composing this piece in London (one of the very few pieces I've composed outside of New Zealand) I was also remembering an amazing work by david Downes I heard in my university days, called Diagram. This piece had the 'electronic teacher' reciting words for rote learning.

When Shaun made contact about commissioning this piece he explained he was putting together a new collection of solo snare drum works that included a backing track. I thought this was a terrific idea, both for giving composers opportunity, and for percussionists as a new resource.

I've always felt the piece could be longer. Once it picks up a head of steam - just before it collapses in on itself - I sense it could really take off. One more thing on my to-do list for life #2.

There's a link to the accompanying video below, and you can hear my original demo (created in Vauxhall just down from MI6 Headquarters)......

This is one of the great albums of my work. Instigated and produced by Fabian Ziegler (who plays on every track), with superb piano playing from Akvilė Šileikaitė, and recording and mixing by Mario Bruderhofer in Zurich. I feel extraordinarily lucky that such high-level exponents of performance and recording committed such intense passion and aimed for the highest possible standard in all aspects of the project.

There's a rare vinyl available here on the store: Modern Gods Vinyl

The Playlist is:

Side A: RealBadNow (premiere recording)

Side B: Halo for Mallet Percussion and Piano (premiere recording)

Side C: View from Olympus Part 1 & 2 (recital version made for Fabian and Akvile in 2019)

Side D: View from Olympus Part 3 &4

Motet was commisioned by the 1998 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts with financial support from Creative New Zealand.

It was first performed by Michael Houstoun and Diedre Irons at St Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand, on 19 March 1998. It is a 15-minute single-movement work for piano duo (1 piano 4-hands).

The material ranges from quasi-freely notated sections to tightly scored driving rhythmic passages. It’s a workout for the players and requires both dreamy lyricism and propulsive dynamic playing.

When writing this entry in the website I went lookign for the original program note and found this:

MOTET (programme note)

In current musical usage, motet usually refers to an unaccompanied, sacred choral piece, often with a Latin text, and often composed in a deliberately archaic style that looks back to the polyphonic composers of the Renaissance.  But the term - derived from the French mot, or "word" - has been in use since about 1250 and has undergone many changes of meaning.

An outgrowth of the 12th-century clausula, the motet was the climax of early polyphony in Western music.  The clausula was derived from a fragment of Gregorian chant (the cantus firmus), sung to a regular rhythm by one voice (the "tenor") and elaborated on by one or two more voices.  When one of these added voices was fitted with a new text in Latin or French (mots), it became a motetus;  the term soon designated the entire composition. The first motets, therefore, were often in two languages simultaneously.
t

In the 19th and 20th centuries the motet has been treated as an antique genre.  Brahms, Franck, and Verdi composed choral motets in the 19th century, as did Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, and Peter Maxwell Davies in the 20th.

Motet has been recorded by Michael Houstoun and Diedre Irons on an upcoming Rattle Records CD of Psathas’s Music; the CD is titled “Rhythm Spike”.

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Hilarious. Obviously copeid from the internet and doesn't say a word about the piece itself! But it sounds clever.....

Listenign back to the works I created around the time of composing Motet it's clear, in retrospect, I was trying to decide on how to go forward as a composer. I felt the pressure that most people do after graduating from a composition program - there were appropriate choices (for the times) and outmoded choices. I also had the tension between my experiences playing in a Greek band all the time I was at university -experiencing the intensity of connection spontaneously triggered by music in a room full of people - and the 'music of ideas', which I was also very drawn to. This piece, Motet, was an attempt to integrate those two 'ways'. Others are the Piano Quintet, the middle movement of the piano concerto Three Psalms, Stream 3, Seikilos, even Drum Dances. Eventually I was able to shake this whole dilemma off and - for better or worse - just wrote what I wanted to hear.

Michael and Deirdre were wonderful - I was so lucky that they premiered the work.

There's beautiful video below of Tarek Assam's choreography to this piece.

One final note. This is one of the only pieces in which I've used a freer kind of notation (an example in one of the score pages below). I came up against the challenge of doing so with the technology at hand (capturing my live playing of sections as MIDI, then transcribing, then makign it legible and coherent for a performer). This challenge (a result of the technological limitations), and the time involved, pretty much shut down that avenue of exploration in my writing.

It's hard to know where to start when describing the journey of this work. Jane approached me sometime around 2010 (possibly earlier) about a solo guitar piece. I've always been pretty much terrified of writing for classical guitar, knowing just how well I'd need to understand the left-right functions and combinations. I committed and decided to take a methodical approach. I asked Jane to film herself playing some familiar repertoire at half speed so I could study it in detail and hopefully arrive at a decent-enough understanding of the instrument before I started composing.

I then proceeded to write a piece that was (still is) utterly unplayable.

I don't know what it is about my composing energy and my aims when writing music, but I always, always very quickly arrive at the threshold of possibility. I don't want to. But there is obviously something triggering to me about straining at the limits of what can be done. I'm sure performers all over the world, who have played my work, would testify to this. A large part of my composing work is pulling things back behind the threshold of impossibility. This space - which is pretty fragile as a creative environment, very hemmed in - is where I find flow.

But in the original (solo) manifestation of Muisca I went well over the line of what can be done on the guitar. Jane tried so hard to find ways around the impossibility of what I'd written. I remember agonising over each and every note that needed to be changed or omitted. When I saw what it looked like on the fingerboard - the stretch that was necessary - and realised I'd have to remove a note from a chord, it was incredibly painful to make the concession.

Eventually we agreed that I would create a two-guitar version. Jane helped me a lot with this. Incredibly, it is still a challenging work when divided between two players! That's some indication of how implausible the original solo was.

Jane and Owen Moriarty recorded the work beautifully on Naxos. Here it is:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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Some time later I made a solo piano version of the middle movement, called Chia, dedicated to my wife Carla.

Originally a guitar duet commissioned by Jane Curry with funding from Creative New Zealand, Muisca arranged here for percussion duo consists of three movements: Soledad, Chia, and El Dorado.

Drawing inspiration from the rich mythology and history of the Muisca people of Colombia, each movement explores different aspects of their culture, from the mystical initiation rituals of the chieftains in Soledad to the worship of the goddess Chía in Chia, and finally, the legendary tale of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.

Programme Note

The Muisca were the Chibcha-speaking people of the central highlands of present-day Colombia's Eastern Range. They were encountered by the Spanish Empire in 1537, at the time of the conquest.

Soledad: Direct descendants of the gods and fathers of the community, chieftains and priests were initiated in supernatural matters from an early age, acquiring great powers through arduous initiation rituals where they were confined in small churches, forbidden any kind of contact with the outside world for years on end.

Chia: The goddess Chía ("the one who is like the moon"), is a triple goddess in the mythology of Colombia in Precolumbian times. She was worshipped as one of the most important deities in that culture.

El Dorado: The name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into the Guatavita Lake. Later, it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold", that fascinated explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors. Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, and a city of this legendary golden king.

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My Love Awakes, commissioned by violinist Lara St. John, is a transcription and arrangement of a tsamikos dance from Roumeli heard on the Greek Folk Orchestra recording, The Greek Dances of Mainland Greece.

I first met Lara in 2011 in Queenstown during the Michael Hill Violin Competition. I'd written that year's solo violin text piece (Gyftiko), and Lara was on the jury. We got on instantly; my family and I subsequently stayed in Lara's New York apartment (although we never quite made it to that inner circle of trust that included looking after Iggy Cane - Lara's iguana).

Lara is an incredible musician, a phenomenal violinist. There are so many examples online - take a look at her Tiny Desk performance. Lara also has a long career as a record producer with her own label.

Some time after we met Lara planned a new album project that was eventually called Shiksa. This album features traditional folk tunes from the Jewish Diaspora, Eastern Europe, Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East, reimagined by today’s composers. Jazz pianist Matt Herskowitz, proved a catalyst to her idea that some of these tunes might be well heard anew. This project includes songs from Armenia, Palestine, the Jewish Diaspora, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Hungary. Some are fully written, some are partly improvised, but they all come from tunes that Lara has known and loved for years.

I was asked about transcribing and arranging this song, and another The Pain Will Find Us (which made it onto the album).

I was quite literal in my transcriptions, wanting to also be faithful to the original artists. But after hearing what others did, I wish I'd embraced the role of Arranger as much as I did the Transcriber. It's a fantastic album, and Lara nails it.

Here's an incredibel endorsement: "No other classical player can play with this kind of real gypsy style, and while gypsy players' technique can dazzle, St. John's virtuosity is on a whole other planet entirely. Its as if she has managed what both classical and gypsy fiddlers both aspire to but can never totally achieve in their reach to the other side." Alicia Svigals, World's Foremost Living Klezmer Violinist

TRACK LIST

1. CZARDASHIAN RHAPSODY (6:07) Hungary/M. Kennedy
2. VARIAIUNI (“BAR FIGHT”) (3:22) Romania/L. St. John
3. ČOČEK (4:27) Macedonia/ M. Paranosic
4. NAFTULE SHPILT FAR DEM REBN (3:50) Yiddish/L. St. John
5. AH YA ZAYN (7:49) Palestine/J. Kameel Farah
6. MISIRLOURI (3:31) Jewish Diaspora/Y. Boguinia
7. SARI SIROUN YAR (4:30) Armenia/S. Kradjian
8. NAGILARA (7:57) Israel/M. Herskowitz
9. KOLO (3:09) Serbia/L. St. John
10. FIVE LADINO SONGS (6:51) Judeo-Spanish/D. Ludwig
11. OLTENIAN HORA (2:43) Romania/L. St. John
12. MOSCOW (5:11) Russia/G. Pritsker
13. THE PAIN WILL FIND US (5:04) Greece/J. Psathas
14. CA LA BREAZA (2:37) Romania/M. Atkinson

An epic score featuring music from all corners of the globe.

Originally created for the 2019 World of WearableArt (WOW) this music includes amazing performances by:

‍Malavika Gopal

‍Sofia Labropoulou

‍Kyriakos Tapakis

‍Harris Lambrakis

‍Vagelis Karipis.

Also, some incredible drum programming from David Downes and mixing by George Kariotis at Sierra Studios in Athens and Graham Kennedy in Wellington.

Thanks to Paul McLaney for awesome musical direction throughout the whole journey.

I'm very excited to share this, it was an incredible opportunity to 'go large'.

Commissioned by 2011-2012 New Zealand Secondary Students Choir with funding from Creative New Zealand, Nemesi was premiered The New Zealand Secondary Students Choir (NZSSC) and Andrew Withington (musical director) at the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Wellington, New Zealand on 14 April, 2012.

Nemesi is based on the Greek mythological character Nemesis, the goddess of indignation against, and retribution for, evil deeds and undeserved good fortune. Nemesis' duty is to direct human affairs in such a way as to maintain equilibrium.

This seven-minute work incorporates body percussion within the SATB choir to produce a complex rhythmic blend of voice and body percussive soundworld.

Passages of interlocking and layered voices, continuously changing time signatures, along with homophonic writing are offset by the syncopated sounds of body percussion to propel the music forward, producing an innovative and dynamic work.

I was able to hear this piece once live. There's a link to the video below. For some reason the performance, on the day, was significantly above tempo - the piece is meant to feel quite heavy - with the footstomps and claps. There should be a sense of ritual and chanting. But at this tempo it's quite upbeat.

As many composers know, a midi demo of a choral work is generally not something to share, so this video is the only existing record of the work. I don't seem to have the best luck with writing choral works. Or vocal music in general - which I ascribe to my own very real singing phobia. I listen to Nemesi now and realise I couldn't escape my dependency on percussion, even in an a capella vocal work!

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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Next Planet

for orchestra

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Dedicated to the players of the Tonhalle Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Symphony.

Next Planet is the 12^th piece in the“Green Piece” series commissioned and premiered in 2023-2024 by the TonhalleDüsseldorf GmbH and the Düsseldorf Symphony as part of their Green Mondays project. Next Planet was premiered in the
Düsseldorf Tonhalle on Friday 28 June, 2024, when the entire series of twelve works were performed as one mega-symphony. The program was also performed on the 30^th of June and the 1^st of July. The concerts were conducted by Axel Kober.

Part of my brief was also to select the other 11 composers to be commissioned. When combined into a single meta-work(with additional inter-piece transitions I’d also been asked to compose) the programme became:

Somei Satoh(Japan) Circulation(Green Piece No. 3: "Public Transport")

Shiva Feshareki(Iran/UK) Recurring(Green Piece No. 4: "Nutrition")

Aziza Sadikova(Uzbekistan) Heat Efficiency (GreenPiece No. 5: "heat efficiency")

Eve de Castro Robinson (NZ) FuriousBurials (Green Piece No. 2: "energy efficiency")

Gordon Hamilton(Australia) Upcycle(Green Piece No. 1: "Waste and Recycling")

Juhi Bansal(India/Hong Kong) Flash,Shimmer, Glow, Spark (Green Piece No. 8: "Biodiversity")

Kristjan Jarvi(Estonia) OHM– Twilight (Green Piece No. 9: "Energy Generation")

Leila Adu-Gilmore (NZ/Ghana) Agua Es Vida (Green Piece No. 7 on the theme of "Water")

Enrico Chapela(Mexico) Spinphony(Green Piece No. 10: "bicycle travel")

Adeline Wong(Malaysia) Verdure(Green Piece No. 11: "CO2 compensation")

Yuan-Chen Li(Taiwan) Digitally Made Possible (Green Piece No. 6: "Digitalization")

John Psathas(NZ) Next Planet (“Green Piece” No.12)

I was the only composer not presented with a topic. My work was subsequently triggered by the self-aggrandizing heroes who are intent on spending billions in taking a few people to Mars, rather than invest that same money in improving life here on earth – which they could do dramatically, and immediately, for all of humanity, with the staggering wealth they’ve hoarded.

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The No Man’s Land Project is an 80-minute live cinematic concert and a future-length film. It’s a deeply moving multi-media work that spans generations, continents, cultures and beliefs, and reflects on the devastating impact and futility of war. Commissioned from John Psathas and Jasmine Millet, the No Man’s Land Project was premiered as a centrepiece of New Zealand’s First World War commemorations in 2016.

150 musicians descended from opposing forces of the Great War and filmed on significant battlefields around the world are projected alongside a live, seven-piece international ensemble featuring Stratis Psaradelis, Sofia Labropoulou, Caleb Robinson, Vangelis Karipis, Jolanta Kossakowska, Joe Callwood and James Illingworth. The musicians, both live and virtual, perform as one global orchestra to create an exhilarating and deeply moving visual and musical experience.

The No Man’s Land Project is, above all else, an unashamed commitment to optimism; a statement to nations who currently find themselves at war. Even at our worst, humanity and empathy continue to survive.

From the composer - “Why musicians travelling in the footsteps of soldiers 100 years ago? If we could go back in time and say to those on the battlefields “guess what happens here in 100 years” – would they believe us? If we said the same thing to those fighting now, would they believe us? Would we believe ourselves? We now wage war on our own species. But even at our worst, humanity and empathy continue to survive. Our story culminates in acts of kindness: soldiers from opposing sides, ‘enemies’, offering each other water, a cigarette, a shoulder to lean on. Even – incredibly – in what is surely one of the most bizarre and dangerous inventions of the human mind: a place called no man’s land.”

This suite was created from a selection of the music I composed for the 2004 Athens Olympic Ceremonies. It was premiered at the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2008 by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Cultural Festival.

The suite contained adaptations of Debussy’s King Lear music, Shostakovich’s “Pirogov” film score, and an unused score for the Entrance of the Olympic Flag.  

It was also performed in New Zealand on Sat 4 Apr 2009, 3:00pm–5:00pm at the Michael Fowler Centre in  Wellington.

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

Commissioned by Concorso Internazionale "2 Agosto" in Bologna, Italy (thanks to Fabrizio Festa), Omnifenix combines directed improvisation on saxophone and drum kit with a fully-notated orchestral score. I wrote this for the legendary tenor player Michael Brecker, with the aim of creating a convincing synthesis  between jazz and classical performance, where the drum set player has a double role: (1) reinforcing the orchestra's foundation (primarily through a notated kick drum line in rhythmic unison with the lower orchestral instruments) while also (2) responding to the soloist in real time. The goal was to allow the saxophone soloist enough freedom for their individuality to shine, while managing a larger symphonic structure.

Stuck in a traffic jam with Michael Brecker and Gil Goldstein, in Bologna on the way to rehearsal, I was lucky enough to have an extended conversation with these two musical icons. I asked Michael what he thought of the piece and his reply was that it disconcertingly 'fit like a glove' - I had spent many months studying his playing and improvising to gain some understanding of his improvisational uniqueness. I learnt from this that to write a work that includes an improvisor (particularly when that improvisor has a powerful standalone musical voice all their own), the work needs to be like a bespoke tailored suit, molded around the unique attributes of this particular spontaneous composer. Michael's 'glove' comment showed me such an approach can work - and in performance I heard confirmation that both the soloists and the orchestra were able to be themselves and perform from their strongest place, and yet integrate together so the elements (jazz and classical languages) were not set apart from each other. As Michael also said "the attempt at jazz-classical crossover has left a lot of musical corpses in its wake".

He also told me a joke: "Have you heard about the dyslexic Rabbi? Keeps saying 'Yo Yo Yo'...."

My strongest memory of the rehearsal and performance process of the piece coming together was this: in rehearsals Michael was seemingly lost, disinterested, and pretty vague about how it all hung together. I was devastated and it didn't seem to get any better as the rehearsals progressed. Then he walked out on stage in the performance and played the piece as if he'd written it himself. He was totally in control and did the one crucial thing I'd hoped for when writing, which was for the soloist to lead the orchestra into the big structural changes, not react to them after they'd happened. I have thought about the difference in Michael's behaviour between rehearsals and performance and I wonder if it's a case of saving it all for when the 'red light is on' (i.e. when the recording button is pressed, or when actually performing in front of an audience). Whatever the rationale, the premiere was a career-defining experience.

I also got to spend time with Gil Goldstein (winner of 5 Grammy's so far), who'd made an arrangement of Michael's Africa Skies for the same concert. This included choir and full orchestra. The African Skies original has a unique, and now famous, groove. My recollection is that the musicians in the Bologna concert were challenged by replicating this groove and Gil fought hard to keep getting them closer to it. He called me a few times when we were each recovering in our hotel rooms late at night. I remember two things he said; the first was "my least favourite question is when a musician says 'I can't feel the time - where is the time?' - what do you mean, where's the f*cking time???". And the second was about the live sound engineer - who I think was being difficult - Gil said 'sound engineers can take the job that no-one but them should be dealing with and, by not doing it well, transform it into the job that everyone has to deal with'.

Also there was Leni Stern (partner of Mike Stern) who was incredibly lovely, and performed at the same concert. It was a gift to spend time with all of them. There's a blurry photo below.

Some 5 years later, we recorded the work with Joshua Redman, Lance Philip (drum set) and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei. This was released on Rattle Records as part of the View from Olympus album - which went on to win best classical album of the year at the New Zealand Music Awards.

Arranged here for wind ban by Scott Lubaroff.

Commissioned by Concorso Internazionale "2 Agosto" in Bologna, Italy (thanks to Fabrizio Festa), Omnifenix combines directed improvisation on saxophone and drum kit with a fully-notated orchestral score. I wrote this for the legendary tenor player Michael Brecker, with the aim of creating a convincing synthesis  between jazz and classical performance, where the drum set player has a double role: (1) reinforcing the orchestra's foundation (primarily through a notated kick drum line in rhythmic unison with the lower orchestral instruments) while also (2) responding to the soloist in real time. The goal was to allow the saxophone soloist enough freedom for their individuality to shine, while managing a larger symphonic structure.

Stuck in a traffic jam with Michael Brecker and Gil Goldstein, in Bologna on the way to rehearsal, I was lucky enough to have an extended conversation with these two musical icons. I asked Michael what he thought of the piece and his reply was that it disconcertingly 'fit like a glove' - I had spent many months studying his playing and improvising to gain some understanding of his improvisational uniqueness. I learnt from this that to write a work that includes an improvisor (particularly when that improvisor has a powerful standalone musical voice all their own), the work needs to be like a bespoke tailored suit, molded around the unique attributes of this particular spontaneous composer. Michael's 'glove' comment showed me such an approach can work - and in performance I heard confirmation that both the soloists and the orchestra were able to be themselves and perform from their strongest place, and yet integrate together so the elements (jazz and classical languages) were not set apart from each other. As Michael also said "the attempt at jazz-classical crossover has left a lot of musical corpses in its wake".

He also told me a joke: "Have you heard about the dyslexic Rabbi? Keeps saying 'Yo Yo Yo'...."

My strongest memory of the rehearsal and performance process of the piece coming together was this: in rehearsals Michael was seemingly lost, disinterested, and pretty vague about how it all hung together. I was devastated and it didn't seem to get any better as the rehearsals progressed. Then he walked out on stage in the performance and played the piece as if he'd written it himself. He was totally in control and did the one crucial thing I'd hoped for when writing, which was for the soloist to lead the orchestra into the big structural changes, not react to them after they'd happened. I have thought about the difference in Michael's behaviour between rehearsals and performance and I wonder if it's a case of saving it all for when the 'red light is on' (i.e. when the recording button is pressed, or when actually performing in front of an audience). Whatever the rationale, the premiere was a career-defining experience.

I also got to spend time with Gil Goldstein (winner of 5 Grammy's so far), who'd made an arrangement of Michael's Africa Skies for the same concert. This included choir and full orchestra. The African Skies original has a unique, and now famous, groove. My recollection is that the musicians in the Bologna concert were challenged by replicating this groove and Gil fought hard to keep getting them closer to it. He called me a few times when we were each recovering in our hotel rooms late at night. I remember two things he said; the first was "my least favourite question is when a musician says 'I can't feel the time - where is the time?' - what do you mean, where's the f*cking time???". And the second was about the live sound engineer - who I think was being difficult - Gil said 'sound engineers can take the job that no-one but them should be dealing with and, by not doing it well, transform it into the job that everyone has to deal with'.

Also there was Leni Stern (partner of Mike Stern) who was incredibly lovely, and performed at the same concert. It was a gift to spend time with all of them. There's a blurry photo below.

Some 5 years later, we recorded the work with Joshua Redman, Lance Philip (drum set) and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei. This was released on Rattle Records as part of the View from Olympus album - which went on to win best classical album of the year at the New Zealand Music Awards.

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One Study, One Summary (commissioned by Pedro Carneiro with funding from Creative New Zealand) is a virtuosic work for marimba, with optional junk percussion & digital audio, that has become a favourite among solo percussionists. As suggested by the title there are two movements (which can be played in any order). While the piece exhibits the ‘busy’ motoric textures for which I'm known, reflective, atmospheric textures also feature in the Summary movement.

Technical setup; 5-octave marimba (no amplification required), junk percussion (optional, only required for the Etude movement), and audio playback system. The playback track is designed to be played through a stereo-pair of high quality monitors and provides the performer with all necessary information for rhythmic synchronisation. A separate click and in-ear monitoring is not required and not provided (although some performers have created their own click tracks and used in-ear monitoring).

This is the first piece I wrote that involved an audio backing track. It set in motion a entirely new way of writing for me that has generated Ukiyo, Between Zero and One, Songs for Simon, No Man’s Land, Voices at the End, a ‘karaoke’-version of View From Olympus and, more recently, Mentacide.

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The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

Commissioned by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln and Repercussion, Orbital is for Percussion Quartet and Amplified Orchestra with a pre-recorded backing track. When composing aimed to create the sensation of an "orchestra on steroids," where RePercussion exudes vigorous, youthful energy at the forefront of the performance. Inspired by the perspective of observing planet Earth and the celebration of humanity as a whole, Orbital contrasts with my recent works influenced by environmental disasters and negative human behavior. The composition incorporates unique elements, such as playing parts of the orchestral music in reverse and creating a synchronized audio blend of live and reversed recordings. Described as a spectacular and immersive experience, the fusion of thundering samba rhythms, electronic sound art, and massive orchestral sounds transcends conventional categorization. The performance, praised for its energy, intensity, and modern sound art, engulfs the concert hall in a mesmerizing audiovisual spectacle that defies verbal description. With Repercussion's dynamic virtuosity and the seamless collaboration between the quartet and the orchestra, Orbital presents an innovative and unforgettable total work of art that captivates audiences and leaves a lasting impression.

A joint commission from myself and New Zealand poet Robert Sullivan to mark the 50th anniversary of the Orpheus Choir of Wellington resulted in this major oratorio.

The subject matter is Captain James Cook’s 1769 voyage to the Southern Hemisphere, ostensibly to view the Transit of Venus but which also resulted in the European discovery of the islands of New Zealand.

This voyage, and its resulting historical ramifications, are literally merged with the journey by the mythical figure of Orpheus to the Underworld.

The premiere performance took place on November 23, 2002, featuring Jenny Wollerman, Richard Greager, David Griffiths, the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Cantrill.

The commission for this oratorio was made possible with financial support from Creative New Zealand and the Lion Foundation.

Very little information exists for this piece. It was written for the 20th birthday celebrations for the Composer’s Association of New Zealand (CANZ). An event called ExtravaCANZa. The piece was premiered at Wellington’s town hall by members of Strike and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra during the ExtravaCANZa concert weekend, 4-6 Nov 1994.

The Wellington festival included the open-air concert CANZdemonium, held in Civic Square.

I’ve managed to find a recording of the original MIDI (which was created on very old technology - Studio VIsion sequencer, and Proteus sample player). It sounds awful but here it is.....

At the time I had thought of naming the piece "Sonic Doom"

Dance evening by Tarek Assam | Music by John Psathas | Arranged by Herbert Gietzen

Penelope - who is this woman? She is Odysseus' wife. She is the one who waits forever who, even after 20 years, trusts her husband's return. This shadowy woman chose Tarek Assam as the center of his approach to Homer's Odyssey, thus viewing the familiar dispute from an unusual angle. Stage designer Fred Pommerehn and costume designer Gabriele Kortmann design the equipment for the new TCG production.

Once again, music by contemporary composers - performed live under the direction of GMD Michael Hofstetter from the Philharmonic Orchestra - is a partner of a dance evening: the music for PENELOPE WARTET was partly re-composed by New Zealander John Psathas and arranged by Herbert Gietzen, and dramaturgically for in close collaboration with the composer set up the flow of this production. John Psathas is known for his powerful, strongly rhythmic music, in which he skilfully combines jazz, folklore and contemporary symphonic music into an extremely attractive crossover.

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The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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PHARAOH

Concerto for Solo Timpani and Orchestra

Dedicated to Larry Reese and Tomomi Nozaki

Commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (Planet Damnation, 2007)and Orchestra Wellington (Pharaoh and The Great Pageant of Thee and Me, 2023)

1. Pharaoh

2. The Great Pageant of Thee and Me

3. Planet Damnation

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Written as part of my Masters portfolio this duet was included in a parcel of music sent by Jack Body to NY-based piano duo “Double Edge” - Ed Niemann and Nurit Tiles (both members of the Steve Reich group). They chose to perform this piece while I was still a student which was an incredible experience for me. I then wrote a follow up piece for them titled Calenture for two pianos and electric guitar. This has never been performed…..

Here is a midi version of Piano Duet (sequenced on an MC-500): it sounds crazy…..

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This arrangement of my Piano Quintet for percussion ensemble and piano is perfect for ensembles who want to perform a contemporary and virtuosic work influenced by Greek folk music. Arranged by Dr. Omar Carmenates, Associate Professor of Percussion at Furman University, USA, it features piano with percussion and mallet quintet playing xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone and two marimbas. The percussion and piano material in Carmenates’ arrangement showcases the skills of the individual performers, with individual lines combined into layers of collective textures throughout the work, making the overall sound of the ensemble evocative and powerful.

In 2002 I was commissioned to write this Piano Quintet for the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, for Dan Poynton and the New Zealand String Quartet.

Every time I write for the violin I get all the repertoire out, scores, recordings, everything…I’m ready to do a whole survey so I can get right into the world of the violin. But I can never get past the unaccompanied works by Bach. Just because I get so fixated on the pieces…and it’s the same with the cello suites. So the first movement actually comes out of the great Chaconne in D minor. And I’m obsessed with the whole of it, the beauty of it. Then I also had a concept of going against the expected. The idea was that the piano is often doing all the drive and harmonic work and the strings get all the beautiful and lyrical stuff. So I gave the piano a kind of rhythmic looseness over a minimalist grid. The piano has this very rhapsodic feeling to it, explosive as well, while unfortunately the strings get a bit of a workout at the gym.

The second movement contains one of the most conceptually specific things I’ve ever done with a piece of music. I transcribed a piece of improvisation by the Greek violinist Stathis Koukoularis, who is one of the top violinists in Greek folk music. If you listen to this movement what’s really happening is that this very beautiful emotive evocation of Greek transcription is placed in the world of avant guard contemporary Western Art music. There are these two things going on in this movement. And for me the movement is a big question, can these two things coexist? And if you bring them together, how does it feel? If you follow it through to the end, where the piano just sits on those chords and there’s just this space, it’s a statement of resignation. I didn’t believe I could find a way of integrating these things. So the avant guard modernist thing had run it’s course, and you are left with a very melancholic nostalgia.

The third movement is a philosophical coda to the rest of the piece, especially the second. You have these arpeggios in the piano, and they start quite dissonant, from the bottom to the top, but the just the top keeps going over and over again, so you start with dissonance but then just through sustaining it becomes consonance…I guess it could be symbolic of many things…a kind of ‘let the world live at peace” idea. I wrote this movement about the time our daughter was born. And it was that kind of beautiful child thing about it. The future is a bright orb of optimism. It really was something that came from the middle of my life experience at the time.  Also some moments of inspiration coming from Ravel’s string and piano sonorities and as I remember, I was listening to a lot of Arvo Part, and it’s like a million miles from Part’s energy, but it was kind of influenced by his emotional aesthetic a bit…the purity of mode and everything around it staying the same.

As a musician you come across music all the time that you fall madly in love with and effects you in such a profound way. In Western art music you can find scores because of its notated tradition. But if you go to other kinds of music, from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, you can’t find those resources. So the only way you can understand what’s going on is by transcribing music out. and then by studying them truly, intensely. And it gives you a sense of the very elastic melodic writing, embellishment of the melodic writing and rhythmic variation that is at its heart.  It’s always about variation and colour, and the palette, like what is your palette of timbral colour or your palette of embellishment around a musical gesture.  The thing about all that transcription, and the stuff I do now, is what it does to your ears. Your ability to hear what’s going on, like tuning, tempo fluctuations, ornaments, rhythmic precision and elasticity… all those sorts of things.  One  really develop an ear for that stuff.

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The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

Commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Planet Damnation showcases the timpani and the virtuosic skills of Laurence Reese, in a solo role. Inspired by the timpani's dual nature of percussive power and melodic expressiveness, I aimed to create a piece that allowed the timpani to sing in its unique way, featuring passages where the instrument finds its melodic voice. Drawing influences from martial music and action movie soundtracks, the composition exudes a sense of intensity and overwhelming power, reflecting the challenge and dynamism of the timpani as a solo instrument. The premiere of Planet Damnation took place on October 19, 2007, at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, New Zealand, with Laurence Reese performing alongside the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Originally commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as a Timpani concerto, Planet Damnation is arranged here for solo timpani and digital audio. Inspired by the timpani's dual nature of percussive power and melodic expressiveness, I aimed to create a piece that allowed the timpani to sing in its unique way, featuring passages where the instrument finds its melodic voice. Drawing influences from martial music and action movie soundtracks, the composition exudes a sense of intensity and overwhelming power, reflecting the challenge and dynamism of the timpani as a solo instrument

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Originally commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as a Timpani concerto, Planet Damnation is arranged here for solo timpani and percussion ensemble by Omar Carmenates. Inspired by the timpani's dual nature of percussive power and melodic expressiveness, I aimed to create a piece that allowed the timpani to sing in its unique way, featuring passages where the instrument finds its melodic voice. Drawing influences from martial music and action movie soundtracks, the composition exudes a sense of intensity and overwhelming power, reflecting the challenge and dynamism of the timpani as a solo instrument. Four marimba and three vibraphones articulate the rhythmic complexity that propels the work forward, employing exciting interlocking rhythms and insistent pulses. Elsewhere, bowed keys and tension-inducing rolls provide a baleful backdrop for the timpanist’s statements. A full complement of auxiliary percussion is also on hand; ominous rototom and bass drum material supports the timpani’s pounding rhythms, while the use of piccolo and concert snare drums retain the subtle references to martial music found in the work’s original version.

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The orchestral materials for this work can be hired directly from the composer at john@jpsathas.com

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Originally commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as a Timpani concerto, Planet Damnation is arranged here for solo timpani and wind band by Jim Daughters. Inspired by the timpani's dual nature of percussive power and melodic expressiveness, I aimed to create a piece that allowed the timpani to sing in its unique way, featuring passages where the instrument finds its melodic voice. Drawing influences from martial music and action movie soundtracks, the composition exudes a sense of intensity and overwhelming power, reflecting the challenge and dynamism of the timpani as a solo instrument.

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Commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra during my tenure as the APO's Composer-in-Residence, with funding from Creative New Zealand in collaboration with Warren Maxwell (vocals/guitar/bass guitar).

Pounamu is a collaborative "folk-roots concerto" composed by John Psathas and Warren Maxwell, featuring Maxwell on vocals, guitar, and bass alongside an orchestra. Commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra in 2011, it blends classical and contemporary styles, later revised in 2013 to include a new movement titled 'Child'. The piece has been performed by the Auckland Philharmonia, Orchestra Wellington, and at the Stroma New Music Ensemble.

Key details about the collaboration:

• Performers: The piece features Warren Maxwell (of Little Bushman, TrinityRoots) as soloist, with conductor Hamish McKeich (APO and Stroma) and Marc Taddei (Orchestra Wellington).
• Style: It is described as a fusion of roots/folk music with orchestral textures, part of a genre blurring work.
• Development: The work was significantly reworked in 2013, with revisions involving notes and new movements added to the original 2011 composition.
• Background: The collaboration was initiated by Psathas during his tenure as Composer-in-Residence with the APO.

The pre-show music hear as the audience entered the auditorium for the concert-length show "Between Zero and One" created in collaboration with New Zealand's Strike Percussion.

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired directly from the composer at john@jpsathas.com

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Commissioned by the NZ International Festival of the Arts and the OrchestrUtopica of Portugal, with financial assistance from Creative New Zealand and the Hattori Foundation, Psyzygysm is a chamber concerto that premiered on March 14, 2002, in Wellington, New Zealand.

The title, roughly meaning "conjunction," reflects the essence of the composition, which unites an eclectic ensemble in support of the mallet percussion soloist, Pedro Carneiro.

Drawing inspiration from jazz and traditional music,  these influences are blended into a dynamic and exhilarating rush of sound. The piano, double bass, and drum kit form a tight rhythm section reminiscent of a jazz combo, while the winds and string quartet introduce wailing, Middle-Eastern-inspired melodies.

The percussion quartet serves as both a musical and visual focal point, effectively intertwining all the elements of the composition into a cohesive whole. Under the baton of conductor Hamish McKeich, the premiere of "Psyzygysm" showcased the virtuosity of Pedro Carneiro alongside the striking performances of Strike, Stroma, and the orchestral ensemble.

There is very little remaining information about this piece. It was my first NZSO commission. Premiered in 1998 at the MFC in Wellington and dedicated to my family: Carla, Emmanuel, Anastasia and Tania. It was then performed once more in Austria at the Klangspuren Festival in 2001. I flew to Austria with my son Emanuel (who was 5 at the time). On our return journey we  were in a hotel room in transit in Singapore watching the attack on the twin towers in New York in real time……

A solo percussion and digital audio work commissioned by commissioned by: Fabian Ziegler, Switzerland - Alex Georgiev, Austria - Adelaide Férrière, France - Omar Carmenates, USA - Zhengdao Lu, China - Sam Um, USA Pei Ching Wu, Taiwan - James Larter, UK - Vassilena Serafimova, Bulgaria - Gaku Ueno, Japan - Edoardo Giachino, Italy

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BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM 2000

Available to DOWNLOAD or as a PRINT-ON-DEMAND CD

Rhythm Spike was the debut release of New Zealand's most internationally renowned composer, John Psathas.

John’s music draws equally on classical, jazz, and rock traditions and is performed by artists from a variety of disciplines, from jazz (Michael Brecker) to contemporary classical (Evelyn Glennie). His most prestigious achievement to date was to compose the music for the opening the 2004 Olympic Games.

Rhythm Spike is an album of rhythmic intensity and poetic introspection, performed by a stellar lineup of NZ and US musicians including the New Zealand String Quartet, Michael Houstoun (piano), Deidre Irons (piano), Dan Poynton (piano), David Downes (guitar), Neil Becker (guitar), and New Juilliard Ensemble members Brian Resnick (drums, percussion, mallets), Stephen Gosling (piano), and David Arend (bass).

This piano solo was commissioned by the NZ Arts Festival in 1994. It was premiered by Peter Jablonski, but no recording exists. It was subsequently performed by Dan Poynton. I have no score or recording of this piece. Deemed as close to impossible as one can get.

It was resurrected as a duo for mallet percussion and piano, with the new title of “Spike”…..

There is a hardcopy score available for borrowing from SOUNZ.

I orchestrated three works for Russel’s performance with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

1 Conception

2 Her Waters

3 Phenomenon

I've been a long-time admirer of Russel's music; both his studio compositions and his unique oboe playing. The standout album for me has always been "Music for a Shift in Consciousness" and the opening track of that album 'Wisdom Calls When the Wall Falls" I've listened to many dozens of times. It is one of my all-time favourite tracks.

Russel reached out to me years ago with an open invitation to collaborate - which I was humbled by. During the creation of No Man's Land I asked Russel to create a textural weave around the kemenche playing of Derya Turkan, the singing of Serj Tankian, the Ney playing of Saddredin Ozcimi, the lyra playing of Stratis Psaradellis, and the saxophone playing of Hayden Chisholm. What Russel created for that was astonishing as much for its profound contribution as it was for its ability to be so present and yet be out of the way of everyone else. It was a masterclass in emotional power and sonic transparency.

When Russel asked me to collaborate on orchestrating three of his pieces for a performance with the NZSO I was super keen but also unsure of my abilities. I mean, I really listened to his electronic, ambient music. I had some idea of what was involved in such a translation. But I was driven more than anything by wanting to help Russel achieve his dream of performing with the NZSO.

Once I started work on the orchestrations my worst fears were realised; there was so much sonic detail and layering in just one audio stem from one of his pieces that I could have used all the instruments in a symphony orchestra in assigning the content of just this one stem. And there were many stems! It really took some doing and was quite an education in extracting the most essential elements from these filtered, delay-heavy, constantly morphing textures.

There was a lot of back and forth, but we got there in the end. When Russel took to the stage with the NZSO (in Shed 6 in Wellington) he presented as someone who had always been meant for playing that role. He owned the stage and was flawless in delivering this very powerful and moving music he'd created. I was glad of my role in bringing his dream to life. It was an honour.

There's a video of one of the pieces below.

My first and only work for brass band, Saxon was commissioned by the New Zealand Brass Bands Association as the A-Grade test piece for the year 2000 Shell Millennium International Bands Festival.

I had a great time writing this piece, I can certainly understand the attraction of composing for brass band. I'm pretty certain I wrote percussion parts that were asking a lot of the players, compared to their normal fare.

I had the rare experience of hearing the piece performed over and over again by the various bands in the competition. Later on I received the recordings of the adjudicator giving a live commentary on each band's performance in real-time. That was very interesting! Like hearing a live sports commentary.

The outcome that year was: Woolston Brass, conducted by David Gallaher, won the A-Grade competition at the 2000 New Zealand Brass Band Championships. The contest, held in April 2000, saw Woolston Brass win with a total score of 293 points, placing first in the set test piece (148 points) and first in their own choice (145 points).

After the competition I went to celebrate with the bands. I was quickly overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the energy and intensity (and imbibing!) and left early. It's an incredible culture.

My other memory is the headache of getting the transpositions right in the score. I know this will all come with experience but at the time it was a challenge. I remember receiving the 'finished' much-proofread score from the typesetter. I thought, just before handing it over to the NZBBA I might listen to the sibelius file playback (something I rarely do). I ran it and realised the transpositions were mostly wrong - it sounded incredible, a highly rhythmic, discordant cacophony. We fixed everything and sent it off.

I love the piece and would love to write a follow up one day.

Second- Hand Time (25m) - Inspired by and integrating the words of Adam Curtis, Henry A. Giroux, Brad Evans, Svetlana Alexievich, and Noam Chomsky.

This piece explores a new format (for me) by combining the emotional power and excitement of virtuosic musical performance with a pre-recorded cinematic audio soundtrack (drawn from real and electronic worlds) and integrating these with synchronised projected text that delivers precisely-timed social commentary on current and crucial issues, such as runaway economic models and their impact on society, education, climate change, the threats to current life and culture, and the future prospects of the human race.

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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Commissioned by ECAT with financial support from Creative New Zealand, this work is inspired by one of the few remnants of ancient Greek music, a short song by the composer Seikilos from the second or first century BC beginning with the words Hoson zes (given here in a contemporary translation):

While you’re alive, shine, man,
Don’t be the least bit blue.
Life’s for a little span;
Time demands its due.

It is engraved on a tombstone as an epitaph by Seikilos for his wife. While writing this piece I found myself contemplating the implications of the occasion it had been commissioned to mark. My own biculturalism and sense of geographical dislocation has resulted in a lifelong fascination with the endless motion of restless people throughout history. As both an insider and outsider I have been shaped as a composer and as a person by what I perceive as the greatest lesson to be learned from my Greek heritage: live while you can.

The work is dedicated to my mother and father, Emmanuel and Anastasia Psathas.

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Created out of two of the works/movements from the concert-length show "Between Zero and One" created in collaboration with New Zealand's Strike Percussion.

This is a merging of the opening track Shiva Sleeps and the closing track Waking Brahma from the full-length percussion show "Between Zero and One" premiered by Strike Percussion in 2013.

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Listen to the single on Spotify

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I wrote the percussion parts and Jack Hooker created the epic electronica layers. We had discussed on and off the idea of creating a single track that fused these two pieces together - Shiva designed to be an opening to the show and Brahma very much designed to end it. Those kinds of conversations are easy to have, but invariably open up a can of worms. Jack dived all the way back into the electronic layers and rebuilt them, making them even more massive and (within that extraordinary decibel level) managing to refine and clarify the wall of sound.

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We decided to make this available to live performance groups and it has subsequently been picked up and played live (as a percussion ensemble + pre-recorded backing track). This is now a product on the store page of this website Shiva Brahma Live Performance Materials

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Omar Carmenates and the Furman University Percussion Ensemble have since made a film of their performance

An earlier iteration of this piece (named Shiva Sleeps) was performed and filmed by the Macau Percussion Association

One word: Madness

I wrote this in 1991 just after I had moved in with my now-wife Carla. This is one of the first things she heard me compose in my upstairs workspace. And she still married me!!!

It was commissioned by David Guerin, a sensitive poetic New Zealand pianist. I've never miscalculated quite as profoundly as I did in writing this for David. He very wisely never tried learning Shocked Awake, and it's never been performed. The only score I know of is now in the Turnbull Library hopefully with one of these signs on the folder:

I played the MIDI (below) in a concert during my first year teaching at Victoria University (in 1994). I've never generated so much giggling and tittering. The audience were in a high-level WTF state...... If you decide to listen, good luck.

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This was a dream project, working with Arjuna at Waitarere Beach writing the songs (see the videos lower down this page for

some footage of our collaborative process).

And thanks to Creative New Zealand funding we were able to record the five songs at the famous Sierra Studios in

Athens with the incredible Sam Notman and four legendary Greek musicians. All pictured below

At Sierra Studios after finishing the last session. Pictured Left to Right:

Me, Arjuna Oakes (voice, piano), Dimitris Tsekouras (bass), Harris Lambrakis (ney), Vagelis Karipis (percusion), Kyriakos Tapakis (oud),

Sam Notman (drums), George Kariotis (engineer, mixer)

Arjuna and I worked on the songs at Waitarere by the sea, then developed the material into completed forms and shared with Sam

and the musicians in Athens. We had an incredible 3 days recording and then worked with George to see the mixxes through. My

recollection of the entire experience was one of smiles and laughter and positive emotion. Absolutely a dream project.

This is one of a series of songs I wrote with David Downes during and shortly after my student years in Wellington. We started with a looped keyboard sequence which David applied wonderful transformation to, keeping it alive throughout the song. It evolved into this dark fable of an old friend arriving at an isolated house on a rainy night.......

We approached a drama student at Victoria University to read the text. I can only recall his first name - Eric.

Whiel I came up with the opening sequenced material, the process of creating this song (from my perspective) was one of staying out of David's way as he applied his tastes, talents, impeccable timing, and studio wizardry to the material. He was amazing to be around and, I understand retrospectively, very tolerant of my 'creative lag'.

Our fellow students found this a disturbing creation, as do I now.

Here's the AI description: Commissioned by Stephen De Pledge for his programme 'Landscape Preludes' and premiered at the 2008

New Zealand International Arts Festival, Sleeper is a short, calm work built on minimalism. The opening measures contain a two-note

ostinato pattern that forms a static harmonic base from which the work unfolds. A sense of momentum and subsequent departure

emerges from the ‘voice-like’ notes, which gracefully evolve into scalic melodies, steering the dynamic and registral development

of the piece, and generating a pulse. Lyrical, child-like melodic gestures evoke a sense of exploration and discovery.

Here's mine: I was just about to start writing this piece, having thought about how to respond to the 'landscape' brief, with some

ideas in mind. Then, in between the teaching of two university lectures, the phone in my office rang. It was one of my dearest friends

telling me the impossible news that his young son had suddenly died, on a train platform in London, while traveling with his mother.

My friend said "I need you brother". I drove over the Rimutakas to Masterton to do whatever little (impossibly little) I could to comfort

and be there for my inconsolable friend. Young Fergus, who died so unexpectedly, was a train enthusiast. This piece wrapped itself

around the memory of his beautiful energy and spirit, and his affinity with trains and train travel. The alternating notes that go through

the whole piece evoke the feeling of gentle rocking one can experience on trains. And the use of the pedal to subtly blur then clear

textures was a way of evoking (for me) the holding one's breath (the blur), and then releasing it (clearing the sustain).

Now that I write this (in 2026) I recall there was a harmonic idea of moving in steps of 3rds through major chords - but missing the

octave so the harmony is constantly stepping up.

The two available symmetrical options with 3rds movement are: 

(1) minor 3rds: E - G - Bb - C# - E or

(2) Major 3rds: E - G# - C - E

I did this (minor 3rd + minor 3rd + major 3rd):

E - G - Bb - D

(D) - F - Ab - C

(C) - Eb - Gb - Bb etc.

So it falls a step everytime it approachs the octave.

Commissioned for Simon Tedeschi by Jack Richards for the SOUNZtender Project, Songs for Simon is a work for solo piano and digital audio.  

‍Donald Nicolson (pf) premiered the piece for SOUNZtender Concert at the Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall, Wellington, New Zealand on May 30th 2010.

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For many years David Downes and I have collaborated on a range of musical projects. During our time as students we created and recorded a number of songs, the best of which are here. We even made a video for one and it was aired on Radio with Pictures.

Set List:

Our first song, Full of Sympathy, was created in 1987, this song (one of 5 created for my Honors portfolio) was our first ever collaboration.

By the end of 1986 I had completed a Bachelor of Music with a double major in piano performance and composition at Victoria University of Wellington.

My piano teacher had been Judith Clark, and my composition teachers had been Ross Harris, Jack Body, and David Farquhar. Other teachers during my undergraduate years were Margaret Nielsen, Peter Walls, Elizabeth Kerr, Greer Garden, Gavin Saunders, and Alan Thomas.

Although the weakest player in my piano cohort (there were three of us), through a a bizarre sequence of events I, astonishingly to all, ended up top of my year in piano performance (with a B-minus !). It was decided that it would be a great idea for me to continue into postgraduate study....as a composer. It was clear to all I didn't have the necessary relationship to practicing the piano to ever be more than barely mediocre on the instrument.

In my Honors composition year (1987) I asked to for one of the papers to allow for the writing of pop songs (an area in which I had a vast, almost total, lack of experience). I suspect Ross went to bat for me and I was allowed to do it. I was then faced with the problem of having no idea what to actually do, or how to write a song.

I set about refining a poem I had written during my Napier summer job, when I'd been consigned to breaking up a commercial concrete driveway with a sledgehammer at the Wattie's canning factory. It was a long driveway, I was a team of one, and it was a hot summer. Most of the lines begin with "I get so mad...."

I put this to music in a very basic way and asked a fellow student, Hamish Graham, to 'sing' it (I hadn't come up with a melody, and I was - and am - 'singphobic', so couldn't suggest anything to Hamish). Names for this phobia are evolving: Decantophobia, Adophobia, Psallophobia or even karaokephobia!

We got together in the main classroom at music school and started to jam. Me at the piano, Hamish singing, and others playing some kind of beat. A younger student, relatively unbeknownst to me, was quietly there observing. This was David Downes; an immensely - I would easily say profoundly -talented composer, musician, and visual artist. David spoke to me afterwards and said he could feel potential in what we'd been doing there. I was glad to hear it, I was floundering, and out of my depth. He suggested we go to the Electronic Music Studio at 44 Kelburn Parade to try some ideas out.

The studio was legendary in New Zealand. It no longer exists, but I think it might have been the first of its kind in New Zealand (possibly the Southern hemisphere). It was established by Douglas Lilburn when he made his radical shift from orchestral and chamber composition to the newly emerging medium of electronic music. Douglas was one of the early pioneers of this new creative terrain in New Zealand music.

David's first suggestion was to sample slamming doors and turn them into the song's drum track. So we spent an hour or two setting up microphones and started repeatedly and violently slamming the EMS doors, looking for 'just the right sound'.

That day and night David and I created the whole song. We entered a kind of shared flow (the first time I'd ever experienced it). It's been there every one of the times we've worked together (and there have been many). Most of the ideas were David's (at least all the good ones). He suggested I recite the lyrics, and that we drop my voice a few semitones. This seemed to suit the song. And David played the 'guitar' solo on the recently-acquired Emulator II (an absolute leap in music technology at the time). Over the next few years we stretched the Emulator to its limits, so much so that eventually it developed a single (but deeply worrying) glitch; when saving our work, the tiny screen display showed "This Will Take a Whilo....". Made us very nervous.

We eventually went on to make a video of the song which was (amazingly) aired on the main Music Video Program on national television in New Zealand. Link below.

Working with David always felt like privileged time. He brought so much ingenuity, musicality, originality, focus, and humour to our collaborations. In the following years we also created (either just the two of us, or with others):

Silent Partner

Law of Gravity

We Lie Here

This Rhythm

Insight

And two dance shows (with Delia Shanly), created by Michael Parmenter: Go and Venture

Quite some years later we co-created a soundtrack to The High Ride - a high-intensity motion ride at Te Papa's "OurSpace" installation.

Our last major collaboration was in 2010, Faustroll with Joe Bleakely.

Here we are at the entrance to the back of the Electronic Music Studio on Kelburn Parade, Wellington in 1987.

And here's me in the studio kitchen cooking one of my legendary (often near-lethal) fry-ups.....

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Sphinx – for solo timpani and pre-recorded audio - was created to convey a series of feelings and states inspired by the Pharaonic legacy of ancient Egypt. Each of the five parts attempts to capture an essence of a particular aspect of the time, the personalities, and the power of that immense historical chapter in the history book of human civilisation. The work is also inspired by Normal Mailer’s extraordinary novel “Ancient Evenings” which presents a window into the all-encompassing power of the Pharaohs of Egypt.

The timpani materials of this suite are taken from the concerto ‘Pharaoh’ and woven together with new electronic textures and rhythms.

Throughout the course of the five movements, Sphinx evokes the desert, the pageantry of massive regal processions, the power and energy, and the mystery and awe inspired by these god-like human figures.

The fivemovements are:

1.       Sandstorm

2.       Giza Sunrise

3.       The Empty Box

4.       Dynasty

5.       Fury

Composed in2023, Sphinx was commissioned by - and is dedicated to - Tomomi Nozaki.

duration: 13 mins

Here's AI talking: Taking as its starting point the most primitive of musical ideas, the repetition of a single note, Spike moves through many

environments, rising and falling in waves of intensity — some ecstatic, some dark, some effervescent — all the while maintaining this

primary impulse, tapping out a one-note rhythm. Spike was premiered by Brian Resnick (perc) and Stephen Gosling (pf), at the Juilliard

School, New York, NY, on 21 February 1999.

Here's me: After overstepping the technical possibilities with the solo piano piece Rhythm Spike I knew that piece wasn't going to have a

life unless I adapted it. I had the option of a piano duo or opening up the sound world to piano and mallet percussion. I decided on the

latter and proceded to write a piece that was almost equally imposisble for the mallet player. But Brian resnick and Stephen Gosling

premiered it in New York in 1999 and sent me the video.

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I love how this turned out, and I think it works well as a duo. But, again, it's a beast of a learn and not picked up often. We made a

fantastic recording on my first ever album (also called Rhythm Spike) on Rattle, and were lucky enought to bring Brian and Stephen

to Wellington for the sessions.

Orchestrations of “Stars” and “Eternal” for Shapeshifter’s concerto with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in March 2019.

Epic return for Christchurch Town Hall

From Upbeat, 8:11 am on 2 March 2019

Zoë George

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In front of a sold out crowd, Shapeshifter and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra brought music to the Town Hall once again.

RNZ Music reporter Zoë George returned home to experience it.

The crowd was dressed up for the occasion, whether it was sequins while sitting up in the plush red seats, or sneakers on the dancefloor, people had come for a celebration, and that’s what they got.

This is the second time the two local institutions have combined forces, the first was 13 years ago. Recorded by RNZ, the resulting album remains a Christchurch BBQ and party staple.

The first set tonight combined the two worlds with sympathetic arrangements of Shapeshifter’s driving bass with orchestral flourishes.

'When I Return' opened the evening to a mighty roar from the crowd. What follow was hit after hit, with the band and orchestra complimenting each other very well.

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Christchurch Symphony Orchestra harpist Helen Webby made a cameo in 'One', giving this reviewer goosebumps in the best way possible.

The town hall organ also got a workout, and orchestra members got a big cheer from the crowd after every solo.

'In Colour' had the crowd singing and clapping along, many dancing in the aisles.

While the music was big, the setting felt intimate and familiar.

It was like reconnecting with an old friend.Christchurch Town Hall's world class acoustics ready to sing againIn the second set Shapeshifter played a mixture of old and new tunes, with the celebration cranking up a notch or two.

This evening was about bringing two worlds together – the old and the new.

The pre-quake and now.

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There was a huge sense of camaraderie among the audience; a feeling that 'yep, we’ve been through some stuff, but we’ve made it and now here we are'.

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Shapeshifter and the CSO were with us every beat, string pluck and strobing light of the way.

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The evening was recorded and filmed. Can’t wait for the album!

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A commission instigated by Joel Sachs and premiered by the New Juilliard Ensemble,  Stream 3 was myhomage to Gunther Schuller's ''Third Stream'' music, in which jazz and classical mingle.

This was from the collection of 'I didn't really know what I was doing' works. I have some indelible memories from arriving in New York for rehearsals and the premiere:

1 - At the first rehearsal, the string players asked me why I wrote my accidentals so 'funny'. They were quarter-tones (uh-oh...)

2 - I went over to the pianist (Adam, if I recall correctly) and he was sweating and super-stressed. I looked down at the keyboard to see blood on the ivories. He looked at me in panic and said "please don't tell anyone! I"ll get taken off the gig". Adam was a Mompou enthusiast....

3 - A kiwi friend in NY had brought his company's CEO (visiting from Japan) to the concert, who didn't know what to make of this musical madness.

4 - Due to union laws in the venue it was only possible (and here we go) to amplify half of the ensemble. As all parts had rotating solo functions, this made the resulting mix that we all heard - incomprehensible.

5 - while I was in New York I recorded Drum Dances at the Hit Factory (in the same studio Billy Joel had just recorded his latest album). I went there with Brian resnick and Stephen Gosling. The engineer (Andy, I think) was incredibly helpful and found solutions to my microscopic budget - we ran out of tape (huge 48-track reel-to-reels) with about 1 minute of music left to record. I couldn't afford another reel, so Andy spliced the front leader-section of the tape (always left empty for safety) on to the end of the reel and we just made it.

Here's a recording of the New Juilliard Ensemble performing Stream 3 at Alice Tully Hall.

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I subsequently rearranged the work for a small ensemble with backing track, and retitled it Stream 3.3

There's a better sense of the intention of the work in this adaptation.

An adaptation of the chamber orchestra work Stream 3, this version assigns most of the orchestral parts to an electronically realized backing track, and leaves the foreground to a combo comprising percussion, electric guitar, piano, double bass and drum kit. There is a considerable degree of flexibilty in options for performing the work – alternative tape parts are provided so that the other live instrumental combinations may be used such as percussion only, percussion and guitar, percussion, guitar and bass, and percussion, guitar, bass and piano. This version has never been played live.

The original was a commission instigated by Joel Sachs and premiered by the New Juilliard Ensemble, Stream 3 was myhomage to Gunther Schuller's ''Third Stream'' music, in which jazz and classical mingle.

This was from the collection of 'I didn't really know what I was doing' works. I have some indelible memories from arriving in New York for rehearsals and the premiere:

1 - At the first rehearsal, the string players asked me why I wrote my accidentals so 'funny'. They were quarter-tones (uh-oh...)

2 - I went over to the pianist (Adam, if I recall correctly) and he was sweating and super-stressed. I looked down at the keyboard to see blood on the ivories. He looked at me in panic and said "please don't tell anyone! I"ll get taken off the gig". Adam was a Mompou enthusiast....

3 - A kiwi friend in NY had brought his company's CEO (visiting from Japan) to the concert, who didn't know what to make of this musical madness.

4 - Due to union laws in the venue it was only possible (and here we go) to amplify half of the ensemble. As all parts had rotating solo functions, this made the resulting mix that we all heard - incomprehensible.

5 - while I was in New York I recorded Drum Dances at the Hit Factory (in the same studio Billy Joel had just recorded his latest album). I went there with Brian resnick and Stephen Gosling. The engineer (Andy, I think) was incredibly helpful and found solutions to my microscopic budget - we ran out of tape (huge 48-track reel-to-reels) with about 1 minute of music left to record. I couldn't afford another reel, so Andy spliced the front leader-section of the tape (always left empty for safety) on to the end of the reel and we just made it.

Here's a recording of the New Juilliard Ensemble performing the original Stream 3 at Alice Tully Hall.

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I subsequently rearranged the work for a small ensemble with backing track, and retitled it Stream 3.3

There's a better sense of the intention of the work in this adaptation......

Music written during my time as a Masters Student at Victoria University of Wellington

My one and only electracoustic piece. Created during my Master’s studies.

Victoria University's electronic music studio (famously established at 44 Kelburn Parade by NZ electronic music pioneer Douglas Lilburn), had just been re-established at the newly-built New Zealand School of Music. Due to the move, and given that an electroacoustic work was a significant part of my Masters portfolio, I had to ask for an extra 6 months before submitting.

Ross Harris had just secured funding to buy what I think was the country's first ever Fairlight synthesizer. My recollection is that it cost the University $100,000NZD. And that was without the optional hard disk recorder.

Later, after I'd been teaching for some time, possibly in the late 1990's I recall seeing the Fairlight (utterly defunct and superseded) leaning upright against the wall of studio 2. You couldn't even give it away.....

The piece SUHM is simply a first attempt at working with abstract sounds. I was surrounded by composers who were masters of electronic composition (Ross Harris, Jack Body, David Downes, John Cousins, Chris Cree Brown, John Young.....). I tried it once, then moved entirely into the world of creating music for live performance.

Here it is.....

I composed this music for the inaugural ceremony of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland as a Super-City in 2010, during my time as the Auckland Philharmonia's composer in Residence. I think it's been used again for subsequent Mayoral inaugurations of that city.

Both titles "Fanfare for a Super City" and "Super City Fanfare" have been used.

One of the pieces/works from the concert-length show "Between Zero and One" created in collaboration with New Zealand's Strike Percussion.

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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Tarantism is allegedly a deadly envenomation attributed to the bite of a kind of wolf spider called a tarantula, which is found near the seaport of Taranto in southern Italy. Historically, tarantism,is referred to as a psychological illness characterised by a “dancing mania”, prevalent in southern Italy from the 15th to the 17th century, and this is what the title refers to.  

There were strong suggestions that there is no organic cause for the heightened excitability and restlessness that gripped the victims. The stated belief of the time was that victims needed to engage in frenzied dancing to prevent death from tarantism. As a result from this therapy, tarantella, a rapid, whirling dance evolved. Many people have suggested that the whole business was a deceit to evade religious proscriptions against dancing.

Tarantismo is based on the same legend that created the tarantella, the idea of dancing faster and faster to get the poison of the tarantula spider out of your system. My theory is that, back then, perhaps one pretended to have been bitten by a spider to give you an excuse for dancing, whirling faster and faster, and ever more frenzied, towards an ecstatic release.  

For me, the whole idea of ecstatic release describes the intense effort of trying to launch something off the stage and into the audience, to make that electric point of connection. Other people can do that in a very calm, quiet and profound way, but with me it's delirious, ecstatic and – when it works – irresistible.

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175 East (named after Auckland's longitude) was a premier New Zealand contemporary music ensemble based in Auckland, founded in 1996 by composer/conductor James Gardner to perform cutting-edge classical music. The ensemble, often operating with a core of six players, focused on commissioning and premiering new works, and championing local New Zealand composers alongside international repertoire. Thanks to 175 East we (in New Zealand) heard a lot of contemporary chamber works, live in concert, we would otherwise have never experienced.

Very little remains of this work. I have the original midi recording and a live performance recording by 175 East  (who commissioned the work). For Cello, Bass, Percussion, Trombone, Clarinet and Bass Clarinet.

It's a long time ago but if memory serves the musicians were:

Tim Sutton - Trombone

Lenny Sakofsky - Percussion

Katherine Hebley - Cello

Andrew Uren - Bass Clarinet

Gretchen Peterson - Clarinet

Daniel Stabler - Bass

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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The Double Percussion Concerto, titled The All-Seeing Sky, was written for and dedicated to percussionists Fabian Ziegler and Luca Staffelbach. The concerto was commissioned by Orchestra Wellington and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in New Zealand, as well as the City Light Symphony Orchestra in Lucerne, Switzerland. In contrast to the grandiose fireworks-driven percussion concertos of recent times, I intentionally scored this work for a Mozart-sized orchestra, emphasizing a more intimate approach. The solo parts are limited to the marimba (soloist 1) and vibraphone (soloist 2).

Consisting of three movements, the concerto takes inspiration from various interconnected concepts. The phrase "The All-Seeing Sky" alludes to both the pervasive surveillance of the modern era and the notion of God as an omnipresent entity documented throughout history. The first two movements draw inspiration from Gustave Doré's captivating illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedy. "The Portals of Dis" evokes the inner realization of being ferried across the river Styx, arriving at the gates of Dis with a grand fanfare. The musical language of this movement carries echoes of antiquity, particularly ancient Greece. Having traversed the levels of hell, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, the travelers find the hidden road leading back to "The Upper World," symbolizing our bright and familiar reality. However, the unsettled ending of this movement suggests that our present world bears a resemblance to the imagined hell.

The role of the two soloists in the concerto is fluid and versatile. They alternate between virtuosic unison passages and treating their instruments as a unified "meta-instrument." They act as driving forces at times, equal partners with the orchestra at others, and even assume a background role of accompanying the orchestra, providing a warm and loving minimalist underpinning in the final moments of the second movement.

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The Deep Ride let visitors journey 2,000 metres below the ocean’s surface aboard a submarine simulator.

OurSpace | Tō Tātou Ātea

Dates: 8 Nov 2008 – 6 Jul 2014
Cost: Free entry

OurSpace | Tō Tātou Ātea allowed visitors to create their own vision of New Zealand on The Wall, a state-of-the-art interactive canvas where users could mix it, own it, share it. This experiment in public curation led to interesting and sometimes surprising displays.

The exhibition also gave visitors the opportunity to explore New Zealand’s culture and geography through an interactive glass floor map and The High Ride, the wildest aerial tour ever. The Deep Ride let visitors journey 2,000 metres below the ocean’s surface aboard a submarine simulator.

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IOANNIS (JOHN) PSATHAS

The Fall

for Two Violins

Commissioned by Chamber Music at the World’s Edge Foundation (AWE Festival)for the 2025 World’s Edge Festival

duration: 3 mins.

2025

This fanfare for brass and percussion was composed during Covid lockdown at the request of the Auckland Philharmonia, to mark a return to open concert-going.

At a time when New Zealand was celebrating it's own succesful response to minimising loss of life during the pandemic.

I wasn't 100% happy with it - and when I'm not totally happy I try to work out why. In this case I think it's because I used certain kinds of percussion samples that sounded great in the computer environment, but didn't translate (i.e. lost a lot of power) in the real world. Also, it needs big brass numbers to really make its impact. The APO committed its brass section (which I knew in advance was what I had to work with), but what I wrote really needs three times the brass numbers, with a lot more percussion layering.

Available to DOWNLOAD or as a PRINT-ON-DEMAND CD

The music on THE GAIA THEORY brims with vitality and optimism, beautifully composed tapestries of sonic and textural colours that have been recorded and produced with great precision and taste, and performed with enormous skill, dexterity and enthusiasm.Every piece is a gem, from the cross-cultural connections in the music of John Psathas (whose exquisite Waiting:Still is here presented in two stunning arrangements), to the unique use of found objects in Christopher Deane’s excellent The Scavenger’s Footprints. Setting the tone for the album, Scott Lindroth’s sublime Bell Plates seamlessly (and quite marvellously) integrates electronics into the mix, a gorgeous, very appealing work from a highly accomplished composer.

Performed by Omar Carmenates with:
Justin Alexander (track 2)
Brian Nozny (tracks 2, 7)
Luis Rivera (tracks 2, 3, 4, 8)
Matthew Filosa (tracks 3)
Sidonie Wade (tracks 2)
Tommy Dobbs (tracks 3)
Melinda Leoce Wade (tracks 4, 7, 8)

Produced and recorded by John W. Parks IV at the Florida State University Percussion Studio, assisted by Justin Alexander, Matthew Filosa & Brian Nozny
Editing and mixing by John W. Parks IV, Omar Carmenates, Justin Alexander, & Brian Nozny
Mastered by Steve Garden at Garden Shed, Auckland, NZ
Design by UnkleFranc
Printed by Studio Q

This recording was made possible with generous support from the David E. Shi Center for Sustainability, and a Research and Professional Growth Grant from Furman University

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The High Ride, the wildest aerial tour ever.

OurSpace | Tō Tātou Ātea

Dates: 8 Nov 2008 – 6 Jul 2014
Cost: Free entry

OurSpace | Tō Tātou Ātea allowed visitors to create their own vision of New Zealand on The Wall, a state-of-the-art interactive canvas where users could mix it, own it, share it. This experiment in public curation led to interesting and sometimes surprising displays.

The exhibition also gave visitors the opportunity to explore New Zealand’s culture and geography through an interactive glass floor map and The High Ride, the wildest aerial tour ever. The Deep Ride let visitors journey 2,000 metres below the ocean’s surface aboard a submarine simulator.

David Downes

IOANNIS (JOHN) PSATHAS

The Jagged Stone

for String Quintet (2 Violins, Viola, 2 Cellos)

1. The Hole in My Heart

2. Thrum

Commissioned by Chamber Music at the World’s Edge Foundation (AWE Festival)for the 2025 World’s Edge Festival

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The idea for THE JOHN PSATHAS PERCUSSION PROJECT: VOLUME ONE began in 2013 with John Psathas’ piano and gamelan piece Waiting: Still which Omar Carmenates arranged for percussion trio. While unknown at the time, this arrangement launched a five-year-long relationship that culminates in Carmenates’ debut for PARMA Recordings. For THE JOHN PSATHAS PERCUSSION PROJECT: VOLUME ONE, Carmenates acts as arranger, director, and performer, and is joined by a roster of talented musicians including pianist Daniel Koppelman and drum set soloist Justin Alexander.

The works on THE JOHN PSATHAS PERCUSSION PROJECT: VOLUME ONE draw inspiration from a wide range of sources. Corybas was built around a particular dance groove found in Macedonia, and Piano Quintet is reflective of the work of composers ranging from Arvo Pärt to Johann Sebastian Bach. Drum Dances is heavily influenced by the drumming style of Dave Weckl, while the virtuoso keyboard duo Jettatura is inspired by an incredibly unlucky trip by the composer to his homeland of Greece.

The works of Greek composer John Psathas emerge from a truly dazzling 21st-century backdrop, where dynamic collaboration with creative masters from all corners of the physical and artistic globe result in outcomes that are visionary, moving, and inspired. Brought to life by Carmenates’ efforts, Psathas’ compositions invite listeners on an aural journey into his musical and ethnic history.

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The New Zeibekiko is a journey through 2,500 years of Hellenic musical history, from the temples of ancient Delphi to the exhilarating heart of 21st century Athens and the Greek islands. Sacred, profane and thrilling, I tried to assemble a powerful musical odyssey, bringing together living practitioners of mystical, musical arts with the rich vibrancy of today’s symphony orchestra. Manos Achalinotopoulos and Petros Kourtis are custodians of ancient musical traditions. They are master musicians, deep, soulful, and electrifying.

This project was the next step forward from a collaboration I'd been invited onto by the Netherlands Blazers Ensemble in 2004. There, we presented a program based on much of the same music, with Manos and percussionist Vagelis Karipis. This program was subsequently peresented by the same two Greek soloists and Stroma new music ensemble at the NZ Arts Festival, in Wellington, in 2006.

As the Auckland Philharmonia's composer in residence in 2010 and 2011, I suggested an orchestral adaptation of this show and we made it happen. The audience was phenomenally receptive (something you can clearly hear in the recordings below). The reviewer of this concert gave a lacklustre, culturally condescending review, which I felt the need to challenge - asking if the intensity of the crowd's passionate response to the music and the performance, and the electric cultural vibrancy being shared, was not something that should have been acknowledged in his writing.

Commissioned by violinist Lara St. John, The Pain Will Find Us (Dui Dui) is a transcription and arrangement of a Greek folk tune from the Vasilis Paiteris recording Song of Greece's Gypsies. St. John sent me a selection of folk tunes from which to choose and base two new works on. I chose o ilios (the sun), a tsamikos dance from Roumeli (the colloquial name for the central region of Greece), and dui dui (two two), which I renamed My Love Awakes and The Pain Will Find Us, respectively.

I first met Lara in 2011 in Queenstown during the Michael Hill Violin Competition. I'd written that year's solo violin text piece (Gyftiko), and Lara was on the jury. We got on instantly; my family and I subsequently stayed in Lara's New York apartment (although we never quite made it to that inner circle of trust that included looking after Iggy Cane - Lara's iguana).

Lara is an incredible musician, a phenomenal violinist. There are so many examples online - take a look at her Tiny Desk performance. Lara also has a long career as a record producer with her own label.

Some time after we met Lara planned a new album project that was eventually called Shiksa. This album features traditional folk tunes from the Jewish Diaspora, Eastern Europe, Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East, reimagined by today’s composers. Jazz pianist Matt Herskowitz, proved a catalyst to her idea that some of these tunes might be well heard anew. This project includes songs from Armenia, Palestine, the Jewish Diaspora, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Hungary. Some are fully written, some are partly improvised, but they all come from tunes that Lara has known and loved for years.

I was asked about transcribing and arranging this song, and The Pain Will Find Us (which made it onto the album).

I was quite literal in my transcriptions, wanting to also be faithful to the original artists. But after hearing what others did, I wish I'd embraced the role of Arranger as much as I did the Transcriber. It's a fantastic album, and Lara nails it.

Here's an incredibel endorsement: "No other classical player can play with this kind of real gypsy style, and while gypsy players' technique can dazzle, St. John's virtuosity is on a whole other planet entirely. Its as if she has managed what both classical and gypsy fiddlers both aspire to but can never totally achieve in their reach to the other side." Alicia Svigals, World's Foremost Living Klezmer Violinist

TRACK LIST

1. CZARDASHIAN RHAPSODY (6:07) Hungary/M. Kennedy
2. VARIAIUNI (“BAR FIGHT”) (3:22) Romania/L. St. John
3. ČOČEK (4:27) Macedonia/ M. Paranosic
4. NAFTULE SHPILT FAR DEM REBN (3:50) Yiddish/L. St. John
5. AH YA ZAYN (7:49) Palestine/J. Kameel Farah
6. MISIRLOURI (3:31) Jewish Diaspora/Y. Boguinia
7. SARI SIROUN YAR (4:30) Armenia/S. Kradjian
8. NAGILARA (7:57) Israel/M. Herskowitz
9. KOLO (3:09) Serbia/L. St. John
10. FIVE LADINO SONGS (6:51) Judeo-Spanish/D. Ludwig
11. OLTENIAN HORA (2:43) Romania/L. St. John
12. MOSCOW (5:11) Russia/G. Pritsker
13. THE PAIN WILL FIND US (5:04) Greece/J. Psathas
14. CA LA BREAZA (2:37) Romania/M. Atkinson

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For many years David Downes and I have collaborated on a range of musical projects. During our time as students we created and recorded a number of songs, the best of which are here. We even made a video for one and it was aired on Radio with Pictures.

Set List:

Our first song, Full of Sympathy, was created in 1987, this song (one of 5 created for my Honors portfolio) was our first ever collaboration.

By the end of 1986 I had completed a Bachelor of Music with a double major in piano performance and composition at Victoria University of Wellington.

My piano teacher had been Judith Clark, and my composition teachers had been Ross Harris, Jack Body, and David Farquhar. Other teachers during my undergraduate years were Margaret Nielsen, Peter Walls, Elizabeth Kerr, Greer Garden, Gavin Saunders, and Alan Thomas.

Although the weakest player in my piano cohort (there were three of us), through a a bizarre sequence of events I, astonishingly to all, ended up top of my year in piano performance (with a B-minus !). It was decided that it would be a great idea for me to continue into postgraduate study....as a composer. It was clear to all I didn't have the necessary relationship to practicing the piano to ever be more than barely mediocre on the instrument.

In my Honors composition year (1987) I asked to for one of the papers to allow for the writing of pop songs (an area in which I had a vast, almost total, lack of experience). I suspect Ross went to bat for me and I was allowed to do it. I was then faced with the problem of having no idea what to actually do, or how to write a song.

I set about refining a poem I had written during my Napier summer job, when I'd been consigned to breaking up a commercial concrete driveway with a sledgehammer at the Wattie's canning factory. It was a long driveway, I was a team of one, and it was a hot summer. Most of the lines begin with "I get so mad...."

I put this to music in a very basic way and asked a fellow student, Hamish Graham, to 'sing' it (I hadn't come up with a melody, and I was - and am - 'singphobic', so couldn't suggest anything to Hamish). Names for this phobia are evolving: Decantophobia, Adophobia, Psallophobia or even karaokephobia!

We got together in the main classroom at music school and started to jam. Me at the piano, Hamish singing, and others playing some kind of beat. A younger student, relatively unbeknownst to me, was quietly there observing. This was David Downes; an immensely - I would easily say profoundly -talented composer, musician, and visual artist. David spoke to me afterwards and said he could feel potential in what we'd been doing there. I was glad to hear it, I was floundering, and out of my depth. He suggested we go to the Electronic Music Studio at 44 Kelburn Parade to try some ideas out.

The studio was legendary in New Zealand. It no longer exists, but I think it might have been the first of its kind in New Zealand (possibly the Southern hemisphere). It was established by Douglas Lilburn when he made his radical shift from orchestral and chamber composition to the newly emerging medium of electronic music. Douglas was one of the early pioneers of this new creative terrain in New Zealand music.

David's first suggestion was to sample slamming doors and turn them into the song's drum track. So we spent an hour or two setting up microphones and started repeatedly and violently slamming the EMS doors, looking for 'just the right sound'.

That day and night David and I created the whole song. We entered a kind of shared flow (the first time I'd ever experienced it). It's been there every one of the times we've worked together (and there have been many). Most of the ideas were David's (at least all the good ones). He suggested I recite the lyrics, and that we drop my voice a few semitones. This seemed to suit the song. And David played the 'guitar' solo on the recently-acquired Emulator II (an absolute leap in music technology at the time). Over the next few years we stretched the Emulator to its limits, so much so that eventually it developed a single (but deeply worrying) glitch; when saving our work, the tiny screen display showed "This Will Take a Whilo....". Made us very nervous.

We eventually went on to make a video of the song which was (amazingly) aired on the main Music Video Program on national television in New Zealand. Link below.

Working with David always felt like privileged time. He brought so much ingenuity, musicality, originality, focus, and humour to our collaborations. In the following years we also created (either just the two of us, or with others):

Silent Partner

Law of Gravity

We Lie Here

This Rhythm

Insight

And two dance shows (with Delia Shanly), created by Michael Parmenter: Go and Venture

Quite some years later we co-created a soundtrack to The High Ride - a high-intensity motion ride at Te Papa's "OurSpace" installation.

Our last major collaboration was in 2010, Faustroll with Joe Bleakely.

Here we are at the entrance to the back of the Electronic Music Studio on Kelburn Parade, Wellington in 1987.

And here's me in the studio kitchen cooking one of my legendary (often near-lethal) fry-ups.....

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The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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This work was commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the instigation of Michael Houstoun (to whom it is dedicated). Michael’s playing inspired me throughout its composition, and his enthusiasm for the work as it grew boosted the confidence that can be sensed in the music.

The opening of Aria introduces a simple kind of melodic motion which evolves throughout the concerto. It is this simple idea which ‘tells the story’ of the concerto. In the first movement there is a tendency for the melody to fall by step; in the second movement it vacillates, is often uncertain and sometimes even becomes lost. By the third movement, all of the motion is upward by step, eventually ecstatically so.

Inferno was inspired by the haunting and deeply disturbing images in in James Nachtwey’s photographic elegy, Inferno. Nachtwey travels to the world’s most troubled places, looks at the grimmest sights to be seen there and photgraphs them in such a way as to thrust them into the view of the world. It seems impossible to go through Nachtwey’s book in one sitting – to do so gives the feeling that one’s own soul is irretrievably dissipating. Musically, energy is constantly atrophying in this movement, yielding to despair. It requires the positive energy of the entire final movement to pull one out of the pit.

As the finale to the work, Sergei: Book 3, Chapter 1, evolves, it becomes a celebration of one of the most ebullient passages in piano concerto literature; the initial allegro passage in the first movement of Prokofiev’s third concerto. This material has inspired me for the entire course of my musical life to date, and I have always wished that it lasted longer and went further. As I composed the final movement of my concerto, there developed an irresistable gravity which drew together the energy in Prokofiev’s concerto and that in my own.

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Originally written for solo piano and orchestra, this work was commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the instigation of Michael Houstoun (to whom it is dedicated). Michael’s playing inspired me throughout its composition, and his enthusiasm for the work as it grew boosted the confidence that can be sensed in the music.

This version for piano and Percussion Ensemble was arranged and orchestrated by Omar Carmenates.

The opening of Aria introduces a simple kind of melodic motion which evolves throughout the concerto. It is this simple idea which ‘tells the story’ of the concerto. In the first movement there is a tendency for the melody to fall by step; in the second movement it vacillates, is often uncertain and sometimes even becomes lost. By the third movement, all of the motion is upward by step, eventually ecstatically so.

Inferno was inspired by the haunting and deeply disturbing images in in James Nachtwey’s photographic elegy, Inferno. Nachtwey travels to the world’s most troubled places, looks at the grimmest sights to be seen there and photgraphs them in such a way as to thrust them into the view of the world. It seems impossible to go through Nachtwey’s book in one sitting – to do so gives the feeling that one’s own soul is irretrievably dissipating. Musically, energy is constantly atrophying in this movement, yielding to despair. It requires the positive energy of the entire final movement to pull one out of the pit.

As the finale to the work, Sergei: Book 3, Chapter 1, evolves, it becomes a celebration of one of the most ebullient passages in piano concerto literature; the initial allegro passage in the first movement of Prokofiev’s third concerto. This material has inspired me for the entire course of my musical life to date, and I have always wished that it lasted longer and went further. As I composed the final movement of my concerto, there developed an irresistable gravity which drew together the energy in Prokofiev’s concerto and that in my own.

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Commissioned by violinist Lara St. John. Lara sent me a selection of folk tunes from which to choose and base two new works on. I chose o ilios (the sun), a tsamikos dance from Roumeli (the colloquial name for the central region of Greece), and dui dui (two two), which I renamed My Love Awakes and The Pain Will Find Us, respectively. The Pain Will Find Us (Dui Dui) is a transcription and arrangement of a Greek folk tune from the Vasilis Paiteris recording Song of Greece's Gypsies.

I first met Lara in 2011 in Queenstown during the Michael Hill Violin Competition. I'd written that year's solo violin text piece (Gyftiko), and Lara was on the jury. We got on instantly; my family and I subsequently stayed in Lara's New York apartment (although we never quite made it to that inner circle of trust that included looking after Iggy Cane - Lara's iguana).

Lara is an incredible musician, a phenomenal violinist. There are so many examples online - take a look at her Tiny Desk performance. Lara also has a long career as a record producer with her own label.

Some time after we met Lara planned a new album project that was eventually called Shiksa. This album features traditional folk tunes from the Jewish Diaspora, Eastern Europe, Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East, reimagined by today’s composers. Jazz pianist Matt Herskowitz, proved a catalyst to her idea that some of these tunes might be well heard anew. This project includes songs from Armenia, Palestine, the Jewish Diaspora, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Romania, and Hungary. Some are fully written, some are partly improvised, but they all come from tunes that Lara has known and loved for years.

The Pain Will Find Us made it onto the album.

I was quite literal in my transcriptions, wanting to also be faithful to the original artists. But after hearing what others did, I wish I'd embraced the role of Arranger as much as I did the Transcriber. It's a fantastic album, and Lara nails it.

Here's an incredibel endorsement: "No other classical player can play with this kind of real gypsy style, and while gypsy players' technique can dazzle, St. John's virtuosity is on a whole other planet entirely. Its as if she has managed what both classical and gypsy fiddlers both aspire to but can never totally achieve in their reach to the other side." Alicia Svigals, World's Foremost Living Klezmer Violinist

TRACK LIST

1. CZARDASHIAN RHAPSODY (6:07) Hungary/M. Kennedy
2. VARIAIUNI (“BAR FIGHT”) (3:22) Romania/L. St. John
3. ČOČEK (4:27) Macedonia/ M. Paranosic
4. NAFTULE SHPILT FAR DEM REBN (3:50) Yiddish/L. St. John
5. AH YA ZAYN (7:49) Palestine/J. Kameel Farah
6. MISIRLOURI (3:31) Jewish Diaspora/Y. Boguinia
7. SARI SIROUN YAR (4:30) Armenia/S. Kradjian
8. NAGILARA (7:57) Israel/M. Herskowitz
9. KOLO (3:09) Serbia/L. St. John
10. FIVE LADINO SONGS (6:51) Judeo-Spanish/D. Ludwig
11. OLTENIAN HORA (2:43) Romania/L. St. John
12. MOSCOW (5:11) Russia/G. Pritsker
13. THE PAIN WILL FIND US (5:04) Greece/J. Psathas
14. CA LA BREAZA (2:37) Romania/M. Atkinson

Two tracks written for the Midi Fusion Band during the time of the VUW and Massey University’s music school merger.

Performers;

Colin Hemmngsen - Saxes and EWI

Leigh Jackson - Guitar and MIDI Guitar

Nick Tipping - Bass

Lance Philip - Drumset

James Illingworth - Keyboards

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BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM finalist 2010

Ukiyo features Portuguese percussionist Pedro Carneiro performing some of John Psathas's most challenging and exciting work to date.

Ukiyo is the fourth Rattle release by one of New Zealand’s most accomplished and highly regarded composers, John Psathas.

This album may appear to be something of a departure for a composer renowned for his visceral orchestral work, but the mix of sampled and midi-based timbres bring vivid colour and resonance to these intricate and exacting pieces.

Featuring Pedro Carneiro, Jeremy Fitzsimons, Tim Prebble, and Stroma conducted by Hamish McKeichProduced by John PsathasEngineered by Steve GardenEdited and mixed by Steve Garden and John Psathas

The aim of this album was to capture three recent works that featured percussion: One Study One Summary, Ukiyo, and Psyzygysm. This wasn't enough for an album and physical EP's weren't really a thing at this time. We approached Tim Prebble about making a remix of one of the tracks.

About Psyzygysm

My strongest memory of this recording project was receiving from Steve Garden at Rattle the 1200 (one thousand two hundred) takes that we recoreded for Psyzygysm. I listened to all of them forensically and catalaogued what we would edit together. I never want to do that again. But the recording of this piece had such fantastic performances, it was totally worth the time involved. Pedro's mallet playing, Jeremy's performance on dozens of percussion instruments, Lance's drumming, Nick on bass, Donald on Piano...it was a stellar lineu;.

Pedro Carneiro,vibraphone & marimba

Stroma (conducted byHamish McKeich)

Mark Carter, trumpet

Bridget Douglas,flute

Patrick Barry,clarinet

Robert Weeks,bassoon

Su Yi, harp

Vessa-Matti Leppanen, violin

Rebecca Struthers,violin 2

Andrew Thomson,viola

Rowan Prior, cello

Jeremy Fitzsimons, marimba 2,3,4,5, bass drum, bells, snares, tamtam, cymbals, bass drum, finger cymbals, cowbell, glockenspiel, shaker

Lance Philip, drum kit, djembe, congas

Nick Tipping, bass

Donald Nicolson, piano

Commissioned by Carla Van Zon for the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts and the OrchestrUtopica, Portugal, with financial assistance from Creative New Zealand and the Hattori Foundation.

Psyzygysm is dedicated to David Crossan, my guardian techno-angel.

"Ukiyo" was commissioned by percussionist Jeremy Fitzsimons, with financial support from Creative New Zealand and Chamber Music New Zealand. The piece incorporates the use of two CD players, which the performers operate and synchronize with the music at specific moments, adding an engaging interactive element to the composition.

This was the first song I collaborated on with the immensely talented Arjuna Oakes. We met during his time as an Arts Foundation Springboard recipient. This program gives a number of early-career artist the opportunity to choose a mentor, as well as have some of their projects and work funded.

At teh same time I was working with Jack Hooker on the lockdown album project It's Already Tomorrow. I'd come up with an idea in 11/8 and shared it with Arjuna. What he sent back was incredible. Bass line, reharmonizations, and multi-layered vocals. It completely blew my mind.

We then approached Vagelis Karipis for percussion layers and Hayden Chisholm for saxophone. They both delivered impeccable performances.

THe final mix was done at Surgery Studios.

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A collaborative dance score made with David Downes and Delia Shanly. Commissioned by Footnote Dance Company and choreographed by Michael Parmenter.

By the time we were working on Venture, Delia and I had become more observers to David's technical and musical prowess. There was an inevitability to what came next. This project marked the end of our journey as a collaborative team, as it had become very clear that David Downes and Michael Parmenter had a special chemistry as a choreographer-composer duo. Together they went on to create NZ masterpieces including Insolent River and Jerusalem. Even so, creating this score and the larger-scale "Go", was a privilege and a gift.

1988 Taane Mete in Michael Parmenter's Venture

This seminal work from John Psathas remains one of Rattle’s most highly-regarded releases. Hailed as New Zealand’s most ambitious orchestral recording,

View From Olympus features inspired and uplifting performances from its principal soloists. Acclaimed as the composer of the ceremonial music for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, John is thrilled that this recording has been completed. “For me, this is bigger than anything I’ve done – bigger than the Olympics,” he says. “These are my strongest works – my biggest statements and now they exist in the world.”

Tracklist:

1 Omnifenix

2 View form Olympus 1 - The Furies

3 View form Olympus 2 - To Yelasto Paithi

4 View form Olympus 3 - Maenads

5 View form Olympus 4 - Fragment

6 Three Psalms 1 - Aria

7 Three Psalms 2 - Inferno

8 Three Psalms 3 - Sergei Book 3 Chapter 1

View from Olympus takes the viewer on a journey into the life and music of contemporary New Zealand composer John Psathas.

Winner: Best Director Documentary Edge Festival 2012 – Geoffrey Cawthorn

The son of Greek immigrants John Psathas’s reputation was sealed when he was commissioned to compose the music to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Athens Olympics in 2004.

John Psathas, 44, has achieved extraordinary international praise as a composer to watch. Drawing from classical, jazz, rock and Greek folk tradition Psathas grabs audiences and takes them on a thrilling musical journey.

Directed by award winning filmmaker Geoffrey Cawthorn, View from Olympus is an intensely personal story about a man whose life and music is split between his Greek and New Zealand identities.

Psathas grew up in a close immigrant family in small town New Zealand where his parents ran a fish and chip shop. When they and his sister returned to Greece John remained in New Zealand going on to forge a stellar career.

Now, with his own young family established in New Zealand but with his parents aging, the film finds John at an emotional cross roads.

Over the course of a year View from Olympus follows John as he embarks on new musical projects and has to confront a family crisis which highlights the tensions in his life.

The film observes John at home in Wellington, where he works creating new music and teaching at the New Zealand School, then follows him back to the towns of his childhood and onto Greece for an emotional reunion with his parents.  The film climaxes with a triumphant performance in Germany of his best-known work, View from Olympus.

View from Olympus is a treat for music lovers of all tastes and features performances from Warren Maxwell and the Little Bushman, Pedro Carneiro, Donald Nicholson, Duo Gerassimez, Manos Achalinatopolous, Dino Mastroyannis and many more.

John Psathas is an articulate and passionate subject and the exploration of the personal complexities that drive him makes for an engaging and moving film.

This is the original ‘karaoke’ version of View From Olympus. The two soloist parts are identical to the orchestral version, but in place of a live orchestra there is a MIDI backing track for all three movements.

Steeped in Greek mythology and folk music this high energy double concerto for percussion, piano and orchestra is now presented in this new performance edition. Following a request from the commissioner, Dame Evelyn Glennie, a MIDI realisation of the orchestral parts of View From Olympus was created to enable performance by two musicians with audio playback. A digital download also contains various mixes for rehearsal purposes; an invaluable resource for those wishing to perform this concerto.

Commissioned by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, View From Olympus has become one of my landmark works. This double concerto takes listeners on a journey through the world of Greek percussion styles and playing techniques.The first movement features an adapted transcription of improvised Greek violin music (by Stathis Koukoularis), the second movement is a tribute to my two children, and the third movement is a wild depiction of the legendary Mænads celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance.

The world premiere of this version was given by Dame Evelyn Glennie (perc), and Philip Smith (piano), at Cadogan Hall in London during the 2015 BBC Proms. MIDI programming of Digital Orchestra by David Downes (funded by Creative New Zealand)

The Furies were avenging spirits of retributive justice whose task was to punish crimes outside the reach of human justice. Their names were Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. This movement contains an adapted transcription of a fragment of improvised playing by one of my favourite Greek violinists, Stathis Koukoularis (it appears as a solo for violin about two minutes into the movement).

To Yelasto Paithi (The Smiling Child) is the closest I’ve come to expressing — in a way not possible with the spoken or written word — the feelings inspired by my precious children, Emanuel and Zoe. In this movement is also caught the summer I spent working on the concerto at my parents’ house just outside the village of Nea Michaniona – a house perched on a cliff which looks down on the Aegean and up to Mount Olympus

Draped in the skins of fawns, crowned with wreaths of ivy and carrying the thyrsos — a staff wound round with ivy leaves and topped with a pine cone — the Maenads roamed the mountains and woods, seeking to assimilate the potency of the beasts that dwelled there and celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance. The human spirit demands Dionysiac ecstasy; to those who accept it, the experience offers spiritual power. For those who repress the natural force within themselves, or refuse it to others, it is transformed into destruction, both of the innocent and the guilty. When possessed by Dionysos, the Maenads became savage and brutal. They plunged into a frenzied dance, obtaining an intoxicating high and a mystical ecstasy that gave them unknown powers, making them the match of the bravest hero.

Forming an optional encore to the concerto is Fragment (percussion version), for vibraphone and piano.

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This is an updated recital version with a totally new backing track featuring synths, sub-bass, guitars, etc. Commissioned by Fabian Ziegler. The two soloist parts are identical to the orchestral version, but in place of a live orchestra there is a MIDI backing track for all three movements.

Commissioned by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, View From Olympus has become one of my landmark works. This double concerto takes listeners on a journey through the world of Greek percussion styles and playing techniques. The first movement features an adapted transcription of improvised Greek violin music (by Stathis Koukoularis), the second movement is a tribute to my two children, and the third movement is a wild depiction of the legendary Mænads celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance.

The world premiere was given by Dame Evelyn Glennie (perc), Philip Smith (piano), and the Halle Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder, Manchester, UK, 26 July 2002.

Commissioner - Evelyn Glennie (with funding from Victoria University of Wellington)

I. The Furies

II. To Yelasto Paithi

III. Dance of the Mænads

IV. Fragment (encore for 2 soloists)

The Furies were avenging spirits of retributive justice whose task was to punish crimes outside the reach of human justice. Their names were Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. This movement contains an adapted transcription of a fragment of improvised playing by one of my favourite Greek violinists, Stathis Koukoularis (it appears as a solo for violin about two minutes into the movement).

To Yelasto Paithi (The Smiling Child) is the closest I’ve come to expressing — in a way not possible with the spoken or written word — the feelings inspired by my precious children, Emanuel and Zoe. In this movement is also caught the summer I spent working on the concerto at my parents’ house just outside the village of Nea Michaniona – a house perched on a cliff which looks down on the Aegean and up to Mount Olympus.

Draped in the skins of fawns, crowned with wreaths of ivy and carrying the thyrsos — a staff wound round with ivy leaves and topped with a pine cone — the Maenads roamed the mountains and woods, seeking to assimilate the potency of the beasts that dwelled there and celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance. The human spirit demands Dionysiac ecstasy; to those who accept it, the experience offers spiritual power. For those who repress the natural force within themselves, or refuse it to others, it is transformed into destruction, both of the innocent and the guilty. When possessed by Dionysos, the Maenads became savage and brutal. They plunged into a frenzied dance, obtaining an intoxicating high and a mystical ecstasy that gave them unknown powers, making them the match of the bravest hero.

Forming an optional encore to the concerto is Fragment (percussion version), for vibraphone and piano, for vibraphone and piano.

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The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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Program Note

Steeped in Greek mythology and folk music this high energy double concerto for percussion, piano and orchestra is now presented in this new performance edition. Following a request from the commissioner, Dame Evelyn Glennie, a MIDI realisation of the orchestral parts of View From Olympus was created to enable performance by two musicians with audio playback. A digital download also contains various mixes for rehearsal purposes; an invaluable resource for those wishing to perform this concerto.

Commissioned by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, View From Olympus has become one of my landmark works. This double concerto takes listeners on a journey through the world of Greek percussion styles and playing techniques.The first movement features an adapted transcription of improvised Greek violin music (by Stathis Koukoularis), the second movement is a tribute to my two children, and the third movement is a wild depiction of the legendary Mænads celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance.

The world premiere of this version was given by Dame Evelyn Glennie (perc), and Philip Smith (piano), at Cadogan Hall in London during the 2015 BBC Proms. MIDI programming of Digital Orchestra by David Downes (funded by Creative New Zealand)

The Furies were avenging spirits of retributive justice whose task was to punish crimes outside the reach of human justice. Their names were Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. This movement contains an adapted transcription of a fragment of improvised playing by one of my favourite Greek violinists, Stathis Koukoularis (it appears as a solo for violin about two minutes into the movement).

To Yelasto Paithi (The Smiling Child) is the closest I’ve come to expressing — in a way not possible with the spoken or written word — the feelings inspired by my precious children, Emanuel and Zoe. In this movement is also caught the summer I spent working on the concerto at my parents’ house just outside the village of Nea Michaniona – a house perched on a cliff which looks down on the Aegean and up to Mount Olympus

Draped in the skins of fawns, crowned with wreaths of ivy and carrying the thyrsos — a staff wound round with ivy leaves and topped with a pine cone — the Maenads roamed the mountains and woods, seeking to assimilate the potency of the beasts that dwelled there and celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance. The human spirit demands Dionysiac ecstasy; to those who accept it, the experience offers spiritual power. For those who repress the natural force within themselves, or refuse it to others, it is transformed into destruction, both of the innocent and the guilty. When possessed by Dionysos, the Maenads became savage and brutal. They plunged into a frenzied dance, obtaining an intoxicating high and a mystical ecstasy that gave them unknown powers, making them the match of the bravest hero.

Forming an optional encore to the concerto is Fragment (percussion version), for vibraphone and piano.

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Composer Note

I'd planned to compose this piece while on a 6-month Sabbatical in Greece in the year 2000. During our time in Greece we christened our daughter Zoe, I attended the premiere of my saxophone concerto Omnifenix (performed by Michael Brecker) in Bologna, and experienced 50-degree summer days.

I would sit above my parents house in Michaniona and look out over the Aegean at Mt. Olympus. A memory that eventually produced the title for the work. Of those six months sabbatical I spent only one day on the piece, and actually composed it when I returned to New Zealand. But that one day composing was incredibly fruitful. I went to my sister's apartment in Thessaloniki (Tania had a piano) and worked out a harmonic progression that provides the architecture for the first movement. A symmetrical high-tension modal progression from a Greek-sounding F mode -> G lydian dominant -> A diminished -> B Lydian dominant - C# diminished - Eb lydian dominant - F 'greek' mode. When this structure was dressed in melodies, rhythms, textures, and dynamics it produced something very powerful, and the return to the final 'F' feels immense and inevitable.

The piece was composed for Evelyn Glennie who had asked for a double concerto to mark a certain anniversary of her long-time collaboration with pianist Philip Smith. I remember when I finished composing the piece and sent it off to Evelyn I thought this would be the piece that launched me on the international stage. Evelyn's response came in two parts - the first was 'thanks so much, it looks great' (which was a massively deflating moment for me), then 4 months later Evelyn wrote again saying it was an incredible piece and that she thought this was 'the' concerto.

I attended the premiere in 2002 at the Royal Gala concert of the Commonwelath Games in Manchester. The performance was conducted by Mark Elder with the Halle Orchestra. My family came from Greece and many Kiwis who were nearby also attended. I thought this was going to be it. It was a catastrophe, for reasons I can't go into here. It took me years to recover. In fact it was only when Marc Taddei decided to program the piece some 5 years later with the Christchurch Symphony (and soloists Lenny Sakofsky and Michael Houstoun), that I was able to let go of the feeling I'd written a dud. In Christchurch the audience were off their feet after the final note. An overwhelmingly passionate and impacting response to the work and the performance. That was the moment I was able to believe the piece was what I had always imagined it to be.

The second movement was created for there to always be a piece of music that my children would have, to know how I felt about them in case I passed away early. This movement expresses the feeling of the love I have for Emanuel and Zoe, in a way that words cannot.

The third movement is a reimagining of the last movement of the piano trio Island Songs. This movement went on to have a further reimagining in the Netherlands Blazers Ensemble Zeibekiko and then again in The New Zeibekiko with the Auckland Philharmonia.

We recorded the piece on Rattle Records with Pedro Carneiro, Michael Houstoun and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marc Taddei. The album (also called View from Olympus) won Best Classical Album of the Year at the NZ music Awards.

I've subsequently created a karaoke version of the concerto which Fabian Ziegler and Akvile Sileikaite included on the Modern Gods album.

Voices at the End was originally inspired by the film Planetary.  In this film, author and environmental activist Joanna Macy suggested there are three stories that we have to choose from, to make sense of our lives now, to make sense of our world. The first story that we could see and accept as reality is Business as Usual. All we need to do is keep growing our economy. We could call that the industrial growth society.

But there's a second story which is seen and accepted as the reality by the scientists and the activists. These are the people who lift back the carpet and look under the rug of Business as Usual and see what it's costing us. And it's costing us the world. We call that story The Great Unravelling. Unravelling is what biological and ecological and organic systems do as diversity is lost.  They shred.

That's not the end of the story though, because there's a third narrative, another lens through which we can choose to see. And that is that a revolution is taking place. A transition. From the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society. And it's taking many forms, this third story, The Great Turning. It's our story of survival and it’s got huge evolutionary pressures behind it. After all, the story of evolution is everybody's autobiography.

These three stories - Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling, and The Great Turning, form the three parts of Voices at the End.

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This is the solo version of the original 6-piano work.

Voices at the End was originally inspired by the film Planetary.  In this film, author and environmental activist Joanna Macy suggested there are three stories that we have to choose from, to make sense of our lives now, to make sense of our world. The first story that we could see and accept as reality is Business as Usual. All we need to do is keep growing our economy. We could call that the industrial growth society.

But there's a second story which is seen and accepted as the reality by the scientists and the activists. These are the people who lift back the carpet and look under the rug of Business as Usual and see what it's costing us. And it's costing us the world. We call that story The Great Unravelling. Unravelling is what biological and ecological and organic systems do as diversity is lost.  They shred.

That's not the end of the story though, because there's a third narrative, another lens through which we can choose to see. And that is that a revolution is taking place. A transition. From the industrial growth society to a life sustaining society. And it's taking many forms, this third story, The Great Turning. It's our story of survival and it’s got huge evolutionary pressures behind it. After all, the story of evolution is everybody's autobiography.

These three stories - Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling, and The Great Turning, form the three parts of Voices at the End.

Voices at the End is John’s big statement about the state, and the future, of civilization. It pulls together concepts and commentary from extraordinary poets, writers, and thinkers; and projects these - as a kind of constantly unfolding haiku - alongside original film content, to an audience in the constant throes of an exhilarating, highly-emotionalised live musical performance.

Voices at the End is 75-minutes long and consists of two works; Voices at the End, and Second-Hand Time. Throughout the show, video and an epic audio sound world create an immersive environment for a virtuosic performance by UK pianist Dawn Hardwick. There is something about bringing these elements together in this way that creates a deep and powerful impression on audiences. The musical language of Voices at the End and Second-Hand Time sits equally well in a festival populated by DJs as it does in a more traditional festival context.

This is a narrative-disrupting, intensely-moving challenge to the status quo, that is as confronting as it is exhilarating and inspiring. The work delivers precisely integrated social commentary on crucial issues like runaway economic models, their impact on society, threats to education, climate, current life and culture, and the future prospects of the human race.

We have intentionally kept presentation options flexible and made the show scalable. Indoors and outdoors are both possible. The show works equally well in a standard concert hall, in intimate and unusual locations, and on the largest-scale (projection onto buildings).

Download the show’s EPK and Tech Rider for further information. The Tech Rider provides information for one example presentation, but many more are possible, simply requiring discussion and collaboration to work through specific requirements.

Voices at the End will be available for touring in the 2025-2027 seasons. If you would like to discuss or require more information for your consideration please contact: John Psathas (Producer | Composer | Operator) at john@jpsathas.com or +64210659845

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Watch the Trailers

Quote from the Composer

“What could possibly matter more right now than course-correcting the trajectory of our planets’ civilization?  Humanity is in desperate need of difficult conversations, open minds, and the igniting of wide-scale empathy. Voices at the End brings together some of the greatest living minds engaged in offering better narratives about the future. Combining these narratives with dynamic musical performance and film creates an experience that is as intensely confronting as it is exhilarating and inspiring.” John Psathas

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Programme Note

The show consists of two audio-visual works;

Voices at the End (40m) - Inspired by the film Planetary and by environmental activist Joanna Macy

Second- Hand Time (25m) - Inspired by and integrating the words of Adam Curtis, Henry A. Giroux, Brad Evans, Svetlana Alexievich, and Noam Chomsky.

This show explores a new format by combining the emotional power and excitement of virtuosic musical performance with a pre-recorded cinematic audio soundtrack (drawn from real and electronic worlds) and integrating these with synchronised projected text that delivers precisely-timed social commentary on current and crucial issues, such as runaway economic models and their impact on society, education, climate change, the threats to current life and culture, and the future prospects of the human race.

Originally written for piano and Balinese gamelan, Waiting : Still is now available for percussionists with this new arrangement by Dr. Omar Carmenates, Assistant Prof. of Percussion, Furman University, USA. It features Balinese gamelan with a percussion duo playing one glockenspiel, one vibraphone, one 5-octave marimba and chimes.

Dedicated to Jack Body, this work is a revisiting of an earlier work of mine, Waiting for the Aeroplane, written when I was a composition student at Victoria University in 1988. Jack was an important mentor during my student days, and two things he encouraged me to do at the time (both of which I resisted) were to join the gamelan (a great regret), and to alter the ostinato pattern in Waiting for the Aeroplane (which I don’t regret). So here, two decades later, I have finally embraced both ideas.

Here it is on Omar Carmenates’s album ‘The Gaia Theory’ - Waiting/Still (percussion and gamelan)

There is also a pared-down alternative version with no gamelan Waiting/Still no gamelan

You can listen to the original version of the piece here on the album Helix on  Waiting/Still (piano and gamelan). This performance is by Donald Nicolson (piano) and myself (gamelan).

There is also a beautiful version for piano and percussion (no gamelan) performed live by Omar Carmenates and Andra Lodge.

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Listen on Spotify

Dedicated to Jack Body, this work is a revisiting of an earlier work of mine, Waiting for the Aeroplane, written when I was a composition student at Victoria University in 1988. Jack was an important mentor during my student days, and two things he encouraged me to do at the time (both of which I resisted) were to join the gamelan (a great regret), and to alter the ostinato pattern in Waiting for the Aeroplane (which I don’t regret). So here, two decades later, I have finally embraced both ideas.

You can listen to the piece here on the album Helix on  Spotify

This performance is by Donald Nicolson (piano) and myself (gamelan).

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Waiting Still in its original form; a duo for piano and solo gamelan.

This piece uses a small configuration of Javanese gamelan instruments (intended to be performed by one player);

• slenthem

• saron

• two gongs (one low, one high)

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When I composed this work, with the slenthem and saron, I imagined the pair of instruments being struck (male and female) to produce the beating tone.

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There is a small clip in this documentary that shows me explaining this with the instruments:

Waiting for the Aeroplane captures a time when I was travelling to Greece to visit my family, who had recently returned there from New Zealand to live. The emotion of farewells, the sense of the distance between the two countries and the power of aircraft, and the frenetic activity of airports all found their way into the piece

The piece was my response to the emotional experience of contemporary air travel: long periods spent passing the time in a kind of awkward limbo, concluded by abrupt partings with loved ones. The alternating two-note ostinato which opens the work, and remains present throughout, evokes the sense of anticipation, while the interjections of melodic fragments above this ostinato are like the fleeting, distracted thoughts and conversations occupying the individual obliged to wait at the behest of influences outside his or her control. Intense jazz-influenced flourishes bring a brief rush of energy, seemingly signifying the arrival of a long-awaited, yet rushed, departure.

I wrote this piece while I was a Masters composition student at Victoria University. I worked most of it out at the piano, and handed the finished score over to my closest friend at the time Dan Poynton. Dan championed the piece and played it quite a few times. He asked me to make an extremely sensible change; in the climax of the piece (the section that has always stopped 99% of interested pianists from taking it on) everything in the LH was a demisemiquaver (32nd note) to the left of where it is now. Dan suggested shifting the right hand one 32nd note along, so that the left hand content could then be 'on' the 16th, and not on the offbeat 32nd. I grumbled and resented the suggestion, but did it anyway. Of course it transformed the legibility of the score, and I didnt hear any discernible change.

Hearing Dan perform this work many times gave me a lot of early confidence as a composer. It does really amaze me that this piece is still performed from time to time. The last high Bb in the right hand is there because Dan had told me a story about a Chopin piece (a mazurka maybe?), in which right at the very end, when everything is resolved, Chopin introduces a flat 7, transforming the tonic harmony into a secondary dominant, right before the piece stops. I loved this idea (especially if it happened so long ago, when rules really were rules).

I remember taking this piece as a work in progress to Jack Body for feedback. Every single time, he would suggest I change the C-G ostinato to something else. Did I really want it to be so utterly consistent from start to finish? It's deeply impacting when your professor challenges you in this way. Because they are generally full of excellent advice and feedback, and you want to please them, when you're a student. The thing is - and this is where Jack and I diverged - I liked the ostinato, and didn't want to change it because I really enjoyed hearing it stay the same throughout the changes and environments it travelled through. It's unchanged at the end - like a rock against which everything else has been crashing and trying to affect.

Many years later when Jack was retiring I reworked this piece into Waiting:Still for piano and solo gamelan. Both the original material and the use of gamelan were intended as hommages to Jack.

Dan's recording on Rattle's "You Hit Him He Cry Out" album is still the one for me:

For many years David Downes and I have collaborated on a range of musical projects. During our time as students we created and recorded a number of songs, the best of which are here. We even made a video for one and it was aired on Radio with Pictures.

On this song Delia Shanly sings the vocals, David plays fretless bass, and I play piano.

Set List:

Our first song, Full of Sympathy, was created in 1987, this song (one of 5 created for my Honors portfolio) was our first ever collaboration.

By the end of 1986 I had completed a Bachelor of Music with a double major in piano performance and composition at Victoria University of Wellington.

My piano teacher had been Judith Clark, and my composition teachers had been Ross Harris, Jack Body, and David Farquhar. Other teachers during my undergraduate years were Margaret Nielsen, Peter Walls, Elizabeth Kerr, Greer Garden, Gavin Saunders, and Alan Thomas.

Although the weakest player in my piano cohort (there were three of us), through a a bizarre sequence of events I, astonishingly to all, ended up top of my year in piano performance (with a B-minus !). It was decided that it would be a great idea for me to continue into postgraduate study....as a composer. It was clear to all I didn't have the necessary relationship to practicing the piano to ever be more than barely mediocre on the instrument.

In my Honors composition year (1987) I asked to for one of the papers to allow for the writing of pop songs (an area in which I had a vast, almost total, lack of experience). I suspect Ross went to bat for me and I was allowed to do it. I was then faced with the problem of having no idea what to actually do, or how to write a song.

I set about refining a poem I had written during my Napier summer job, when I'd been consigned to breaking up a commercial concrete driveway with a sledgehammer at the Wattie's canning factory. It was a long driveway, I was a team of one, and it was a hot summer. Most of the lines begin with "I get so mad...."

I put this to music in a very basic way and asked a fellow student, Hamish Graham, to 'sing' it (I hadn't come up with a melody, and I was - and am - 'singphobic', so couldn't suggest anything to Hamish). Names for this phobia are evolving: Decantophobia, Adophobia, Psallophobia or even karaokephobia!

We got together in the main classroom at music school and started to jam. Me at the piano, Hamish singing, and others playing some kind of beat. A younger student, relatively unbeknownst to me, was quietly there observing. This was David Downes; an immensely - I would easily say profoundly -talented composer, musician, and visual artist. David spoke to me afterwards and said he could feel potential in what we'd been doing there. I was glad to hear it, I was floundering, and out of my depth. He suggested we go to the Electronic Music Studio at 44 Kelburn Parade to try some ideas out.

The studio was legendary in New Zealand. It no longer exists, but I think it might have been the first of its kind in New Zealand (possibly the Southern hemisphere). It was established by Douglas Lilburn when he made his radical shift from orchestral and chamber composition to the newly emerging medium of electronic music. Douglas was one of the early pioneers of this new creative terrain in New Zealand music.

David's first suggestion was to sample slamming doors and turn them into the song's drum track. So we spent an hour or two setting up microphones and started repeatedly and violently slamming the EMS doors, looking for 'just the right sound'.

That day and night David and I created the whole song. We entered a kind of shared flow (the first time I'd ever experienced it). It's been there every one of the times we've worked together (and there have been many). Most of the ideas were David's (at least all the good ones). He suggested I recite the lyrics, and that we drop my voice a few semitones. This seemed to suit the song. And David played the 'guitar' solo on the recently-acquired Emulator II (an absolute leap in music technology at the time). Over the next few years we stretched the Emulator to its limits, so much so that eventually it developed a single (but deeply worrying) glitch; when saving our work, the tiny screen display showed "This Will Take a Whilo....". Made us very nervous.

We eventually went on to make a video of the song which was (amazingly) aired on the main Music Video Program on national television in New Zealand. Link below.

Working with David always felt like privileged time. He brought so much ingenuity, musicality, originality, focus, and humour to our collaborations. In the following years we also created (either just the two of us, or with others):

Silent Partner

Law of Gravity

We Lie Here

This Rhythm

Insight

And two dance shows (with Delia Shanly), created by Michael Parmenter: Go and Venture

Quite some years later we co-created a soundtrack to The High Ride - a high-intensity motion ride at Te Papa's "OurSpace" installation.

Our last major collaboration was in 2010, Faustroll with Joe Bleakely.

Here we are at the entrance to the back of the Electronic Music Studio on Kelburn Parade, Wellington in 1987.

And here's me in the studio kitchen cooking one of my legendary (often near-lethal) fry-ups.....

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White Feather (2018) - duration: 10m - was commissioned by the Texas Christian University Percussion Orchestra at the instigation of Professor Brian A. West. The first performance of the work was given at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, on the 27th of October 2019.

The title of this work refers to what is often considered the most common angel feather.

I had originally intended to title the work ‘our ever-loving ghosts’. When I imagine angels, I think of the loved ones I’ve lost, still around me, somehow. Transmitting love and care.

Supposedly, a sign our angels are with us is finding a feather. Coming across a feather in your path, or finding one in an unexpected place is thought to be a message from the angels. Specifically, the white feather is thought to be a sign of faith and protection. It can also be an angel telling you that your loved ones are safe and well.  

It is said our angels are always near us, looking over us and protecting us, yet we very rarely know that they are there. Sometimes, in the midst of our rapidly-paced living, they'll send us small signs and signals to let us know they're near, and will always be there for us (until we are ’there’ for others).

These signs can be anything from a subtle flash of light, a rainbow, or an unexpected, sudden feeling of love and warmth within.

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‍White Lies - Tuakiri Huna is a 2013 New Zealand film directed by Dana Rotberg and stars Whirimako Black, Antonia Prebble, and Rachel House. It is based on the novella Medicine Woman by Witi Ihimaera. Regarded as an excellent portrayal of colonial oppression in New Zealand, the film deals with the impacts of the Tohunga Suppression Act upon Māori traditions surrounding childbirth.^[2][3]

The story is about a medicine woman Paraiti, who is approached by Maraea, the servant of wealthy woman, Rebecca Vickers, to perform an abortion.^[4] Unbeknownst to Paraiti, Maraea has hidden plans. The unborn baby becomes the central figure in the story, as the women are forced to reconcile their differing perspectives and confront their own expectations of motherhood, life and death.^[5]

The film premiered in New Zealand cinemas on 27 June 2013.^[6] It screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.^[7][8] The film was selected as the New Zealand entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.^[9]

The music to White Lies has been released as a 28-minute piece for piano and taonga puoro created from the score composed for the film.

Based on the novella ‘Medicine Woman’ by Witi Ihimaera, the film was written and directed by Dana Rotberg for South Pacific Pictures, and features Rattle recording artist Whirimako Black in her feature film debut in the central role of Paraiti.

"The composition is a very delicate, poignant composition that slowly evolves, opening and closing, rising and falling, steadily moving through a very touching emotional landscape. Emma Sayers and Richard Nunns perform with great empathy and tenderness, negotiating the relatively simple motifs with impressive restraint and emotional understatement.

Composed and produced by John Psathas, featuring Richard Nunns (taonga puoro), Emma Sayers (piano), Sasha Gachenko & Matt Cave (bass), Rowan Prior & Paul Mitchell (cello), Konstanze Artmann & Irina Andreeva (viola), Kate Oswin & Matthew Ross (violin), John Psathas (synthesizer), mixed by Steve Garden and John Psathas, designed by UnkleFranc"

Plot

As a young girl Paraiti, witnesses the brutal killing of her family by European settlers in a conflict that leaves a permanent scar on her cheek.^[10] Many years later, Paraiti, lives a semi-nomadic existence in the rural Te Urewera region of New Zealand, and is working underground as a medicine woman and healer.^[10] In 1907, the New Zealand government passed the Tohunga Suppression Act to outlaw natural healing for Māori. Forbidden from practicing her traditional healing arts and using native medicine under the act, Paraiti endeavours to care for her people in strict secrecy.^[10] It is later revealed that Paraiti trains pregnant young women in birthing procedures and secretly uses a variety of herbs and plants to apply ancient healing methods to her patients.^[11]

On a rare visit to town, Paraiti is approached by Maraea, the Māori housekeeper of a wealthy white woman named Rebecca Vickers (Antonia Prebble).^[12] Rebecca is pregnant and seeks to terminate the pregnancy before her wealthy husband, a businessman, returns from an extended absence in Europe.^[11] Paraiti would be paid handsomely for her services and discretion, provided she could perform the abortion in less than a week's time.^[11] Initially, Paraiti refuses to help, but changes her mind when a young Māori girl and her unborn baby die at the hands of a white nurse.^[10] The scene has been described as a harrowing turning point for Paraiti, as she is forced to retrieve the whenua (placenta) of the stillborn child from a rusted garbage can in order to return it to her land and people.^[13] Paraiti decides to help Rebecca as her way of “restoring some justice”, although it is unclear exactly what she means.^[10]

Mrs Vickers is an "imperious snob" who shows obvious disdain towards Paraiti and her “ancient ways.”^[10] Maraea proves an even greater adversary, refusing to speak to Paraiti in their native language and speaking down to her.^[10] Nevertheless, Paraiti remains stoic. As the week progresses, Paraiti begins to uncover hidden secrets within the house, while revealing her own plan for justice.^[10] The pivotal turning point occurs when it is revealed that Maraea is Rebecca's mother and has been bleaching her skin daily since childhood to ensure her survival in a white world.^[3] The birth of the baby would reveal her true identity to her husband and to society.

Rebecca gives birth on the clay floor of the cellar under the house, surrounded by Paraiti and Maraea.^[3]

Screenplay and adaptation

In the extras of the DVD, Witi Ihimaera tells how his mother took him to Paraiti, a tohunga/healer who cured him of a breathing problem. In writing the story, he wanted to honour the various tohunga in Māori life.

The screenplay for the film was adapted from Witi Ihimaera's 2007 novella 'Medicine Woman', found in the collection Ask The Posts of the House.^[14] The screenwriter and director of the film, Dana Rotberg, has described the novella as "a perfect piece of storytelling", which "contained complexity, was generous in its understanding of human drama and had a delightful sense of humour."^[15] Describing her inspiration to adapt the novella, Rotberg has stated: "The story would not leave my mind. It kept visiting me while I was driving on the motorway, when falling asleep, while cooking … Paraiti, the medicine woman, was a stubborn presence who refused to leave and I became haunted by her."^[15]

Throughout the process of adaptation, Rotberg was careful to respect and honour the Māori story at the centre of the narrative. Born and raised in Mexico, Rotberg moved to New Zealand in 2002 after watching Whale Rider, a film also based on a story by Ihimaera.^[16] Rotberg worked closely with cultural advisors Kararaina Rangihau, Tangiora Tawhara and Whitiaua Ropitini, and claimed that the advisors formed an "integral part"^[17] of the scriptwriting and production process, and that “[e]very word was approved."^[17] She also read prodigiously about Tuhoe and spent time in Te Urewera in preparation for the film.^[18]

The film has been commended as a "sincere, heartfelt attempt to enter into and convey a Maori story told through Maori eyes" that is "doubly commendable because it is written and directed by a film-maker who was born, and learned her craft, in Mexico."^[19]

Rotberg has stated that she felt “privileged” to be “guided by people who know the Māori culture from deep within."^[20] She has stated:

“…I would never have shot anything if I had not have had the approval, the blessing and the participation of the people who were hosting us – culturally, logistically and in terms of location. I worked with these people for a number of years before the final script was brought to production.”^[17]

Rotberg has also spoken of a deep personal connection with Ihimaera's novella, and has stated that the story spoke to her in a way that transcended boundaries of race and culture. While careful to adapt the script with cultural integrity, Rotberg felt compelled to infuse the story with her own identity "as a filmmaker and as a human being."^[20]

“I felt [there] was a clear sign that the story told by Witi Ihimaera was speaking to me from places other than where the original work had come from. Places that belonged to my intimate family history and my most unresolved conflicts as a person in the world. It was a call from the core of my origins to look for answers that mattered to me, being myself a half-caste, a woman, a mother and a descendant of people who have been eternal immigrants or brutally colonised by others. A call coming from every drop of the Mexican, Jewish, Catholic, Polish, indigenous, Italian, Spanish and Russian blood that runs through my veins. The blood of my tipuna. My very own whakapapa.”^[15]

Embarking on the process of adaptation, Rotberg asked Ihimaera for "freedom and independence from him an author" to transform Medicine Woman into the final screenplay for White Lies - Tuakiri Huna.^[21] She made several marked changes to the novella's original storyline. In the original novella, Maraea is subject to Rebecca's wishes.^[22] In the film, however, Maraea is conceived as the "puppet-master" of the story, pulling strings and controlling the actions of the other female protagonists.^[4] Importantly, in the film, Paraiti decides to save the unborn child prior to finding out its true identity. Rotberg believed this to be of great importance, claiming it would illustrate a greater storyline of humanity and redemption.^[22]

Find out more about the film here

Soundtrack on Youtube

Full movie available for free on Youtube

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired directly from the composer at john@jpsathas.com

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Zahara is a saxophone concerto  commissioned by saxophonist Federico Mondelci after hearing my other saxophone concerto Omnifenix. The premiere of "Zahara" featured Federico Mondelci as the saxophone soloist, accompanied by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under the baton of David Atherton, and took place at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, New Zealand, on September 22, 2006.

Zahara, was originally a concerto for saxophone and orchestra. This duo adaptation for piano and saxophone, was created by the composer in 2024.

It is approximately 24 minutes in duration.

The work is in 4 movements..

1 Movement I

2 Movement II

3 Interlude

4 Movement III

The orchestral materials for this work can be hired from the composer. For enquiries go to Orchestral Hires

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Movements

I. Mirologio

II. Movement II

III. Interlude

IV. Movement III

Duration 23:00 minutes

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Full Instrumentation

Instrumentation 3(pic,afl).3(ca).3.3(cbn) / 4.3.3.1 / timp.3perc / str

3 Flutes (dbl pic & afl)
3 Oboes (dbl ca)
3 Clarinets
3 Bassoons (dbl cbn)

4 Horns
3 Trumpets
3 Trombone
Tuba

Timpani
3 Percussion

Strings

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Inspiration

Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King

Skeletons on the Zahara chronicles the true story of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the perilous heart of the Sahara.

The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub -- and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled sailors for centuries. In August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, starvation, dehydration, death and despair.

Captured, robbed and enslaved, the sailors were dragged and driven through the desert by their new owners, who neither spoke their language nor cared for their plight. Reduced to drinking urine, flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand and losing over half of their body weights, the sailors struggled to hold onto both their humanity and their sanity. To reach safety, they would have to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity.

From the cold waters of the Atlantic to the searing Saharan sands, from the heart of the desert to the heart of man, Skeletons on the Zahara is a spectacular odyssey through the extremes and a gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.

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Review

‍Rod Biss, The Listener, October 2006: Zahara is a brilliant score exploring exotic new Psathas sounds in the first movement and giving us the big-band build-up in the last movement that we now expect. The finale is a bacchanalian dance scene…an effective, noisy end to a beautiful new score, superbly played and perceptively conducted.

Resources

RESEARCHERS: EXPLORE ZAHARA CONCERTO FOR SAXOPHONE AND ORCHESTRA AT THE ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY

PERFORMANCE MATERIALS

PREVIEW ZAHARA ON YUMPU

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I composed Zeal while living in Atlanta, Georgia in 1992. My (soon to be) wife Carla was working in IT for IBM, and I was ensconced at Wood Hollow apartments in Marietta writing this piece for Double Edge (Ed Niemann and Nurit Tilles) both pianists in the Steve Reich group.

There's a significant A-to-Z bookmarking in my output. The 'A' is Abhisheka and the 'Z' is Zeal, both written in the first half of the 1990s when I was still in thrall to the ethos and priorities of a university-composer mindset. Both of these pieces share a fascinating characteristic - they are the (only) two works of mine that other composers consistently (almost universally) give a big thumbs up to. No other works I've created share this distinction. And yet ( - and more subtly - possibly because of this composerly-consensus), I feel more detached from these two works than any of my others. Don't get me wrong, I love both pieces and am proud of having created them, but I believe they came from a time when I was still more 'in my head'. Composers reading this, who know some of the music I went on to write, may think that was a good thing and I should have stayed in my head, but in my own journey I'm glad to have freed myself from that imbalance between the head, the body, and the heart. A few composers felt strongly enough over the years to tell me they wished I'd continued to travel the path I was on with Zeal and Abhsisheka. I guess it's a 'composer's piece'.

There are five movements

1 Lulling Imagination to Sleep

2 Ghost Hunting

3 Zeal

4 Amalgam

5 Unstoppable Forces : Immovable Objects

I'm very grateful to Ya-Ting Liou and Blaz Gonzales for taking on the daunting challenge of recording this piece.

I performed it with Dan Poynton in 1994 during my first year of lecturing at Victoria University. Here's the proof....

SCORE AVAILABLE FROM WAITEATA PRESS MUSIC

CD RECORDING AVAILABLE HERE

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Zeibekiko was conceived as an entire programme of music celebrating the heritage of Greek music from antiquity and the present day. The work was commissioned by The Eduard van Beinum Foundation at the request of the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, and was composed for that ensemble with the addition of two traditional Greek musicians, the clarino player Manos Achalinotopoulos and the percussionist Vagelis Karypis. The work comprises works and arrangements by myself alongside compositions by Christos Hatzis and improvisations by Achalinotopoulos, Karypis and the percussionists of the NBE.