Martin Curtis

Last updated

Martin Curtis is a leading New Zealand folksinger and songwriter.

Contents

Biography

Born in Great Britain on 7 February 1944, he came to New Zealand in 1964. In 1976, he and his wife Kay went to Wānaka in Central Otago in the South Island to manage a youth hostel in the town for two weeks. They loved the place, and stayed. They now live in the Cardrona Valley, near Wānaka. His love of the area is reflected in the large number of songs he has written about the district.

Martin runs the annual Cardrona Folk Festival that takes place every Labour Weekend. (New Zealand's Labour Day falls on the 4th Monday of October.) He is also responsible for organising tours of New Zealand by top folk musicians, mainly from Britain, but including Eric Bogle from Australia and Jeremy Taylor from South Africa.

He has produced a number of albums. His 1982 debut album, Gin and Raspberry, is recognised by the New Zealand Recording Industry Association as the best-selling New Zealand folk music album. His 2008 album Sea to Summit was one of three contenders for the 2009 Tui Award for the best New Zealand folk music album of the year.

Discography

1982: Gin and Raspberry

1986: Back from the Hills

1990: The Daisy Patch

1994: Save the Wilderness

1996: Off to the Dry Cardrona

1998: Below the High Country

2000: Let's Sing a Kiwi Song (children's album)

2002: Beyond a Climber's Moon

2004: Otago, My Home (DVD)

2008: Sea to Summit

See also

Martin Curtis Home Page: http://www.martincurtis.co.nz/

Cardrona Folk Festival: http://www.martincurtis.co.nz/cardrona.html

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queenstown, New Zealand</span> Resort town in New Zealands South Island

Queenstown is a resort town in Otago in the south-west of New Zealand's South Island. It has an urban population of 29,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music of New Zealand</span> Overview of music traditions in New Zealand

The music of New Zealand has been influenced by a number of traditions, including Māori music, the music introduced by European settlers during the nineteenth century, and a variety of styles imported during the twentieth century, including blues, jazz, country, rock and roll, reggae, and hip hop, with many of these genres given a unique New Zealand interpretation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clutha River</span> River in the South Island of New Zealand

The Clutha River is the second longest river in New Zealand and the longest in the South Island. It flows south-southeast 338 kilometres (210 mi) through Central and South Otago from Lake Wānaka in the Southern Alps to the Pacific Ocean, 75 kilometres (47 mi) south west of Dunedin. It is the highest volume river in New Zealand, and the swiftest, with a catchment of 21,960 square kilometres (8,480 sq mi), discharging a mean flow of 614 cubic metres per second (21,700 cu ft/s). The river is known for its scenery, gold-rush history, and swift turquoise waters. A river conservation group, the Clutha Mata-Au River Parkway Group, is working to establish a regional river parkway, with a trail, along the entire river corridor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Wānaka</span> Lake in Otago, New Zealand

Lake Wānaka is New Zealand's fourth-largest lake and the seat of the town of Wānaka in the Otago region. The lake is 278 meters above sea level, covers 192 km2 (74 sq mi), and is more than 300 m (980 ft) deep.

Chris Knox is a New Zealand rock and roll musician, cartoonist and movie reviewer who emerged during the punk rock era with his bands The Enemy and Toy Love. After Toy Love disbanded in the early 1980s, he formed the group Tall Dwarfs with guitarist Alec Bathgate. The Tall Dwarfs were noted for their unpolished sound and intense live shows. His 4-track machine was used to record most of the early Flying Nun singles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wānaka</span> Resort town in Otago, New Zealand

Wānaka is a popular ski and summer resort town in the Otago region of the South Island of New Zealand. At the southern end of Lake Wānaka, it is at the start of the Clutha River and is the gateway to Mount Aspiring National Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treble Cone</span>

Treble Cone is the closest ski area to Wānaka, New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Otago Gold Rush</span> 1860s gold rush in Central Otago, New Zealand

The Otago Gold Rush was a gold rush that occurred during the 1860s in Central Otago, New Zealand. This was the country's biggest gold strike, and led to a rapid influx of foreign miners to the area – many of them veterans of other hunts for the precious metal in California and Victoria, Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Hāwea</span> Lake in Otago Region, New Zealand

Lake Hāwea is New Zealand's ninth largest lake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardrona Bra Fence</span> Tourist attraction in New Zealand

The Cardrona Bra Fence is a controversial tourist attraction in Central Otago, in New Zealand. At some point between 1998 and 1999, passers-by began to attach bras to a rural fence. The fence gradually became a well known site as the number of bras grew to hundreds. The fence is located on a public road reserve, adjacent to farm property in the Cardrona Valley area southwest of Wānaka, near to Cardrona.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Zealand music festivals</span>

Music festivals have a long and chequered history in New Zealand. The first large outdoor rock music festivals were Redwood 70 in 1970 and the Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival in 1973. The largest was the 1979 Nambassa festival, one of several Nambassa festivals held around that time, in Golden Valley, just north of Waihi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cardrona, New Zealand</span> Rural locality in Otago, New Zealand

Cardrona is the name of a locality in the Cardrona Valley in New Zealand, with the nearby skifield of Cardrona Alpine Resort and Mount Cardrona also using the same name. Established as a gold rush township in the 1860s on the banks of the small river of the same name, it is known for its distinctive hotel of gold rush vintage which is on the opposite side of the river to the original township of which few buildings remain. It is in a scenic setting on the Crown Range road which connects Wānaka and Queenstown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silverstone Race to the Sky</span>

The Race to the Sky is an annual automobile and motorcycle gravel hillclimb to the summit of a mountain in the Cardrona Valley of New Zealand. The race was held every year from 1998 to 2007 for two days over the Easter weekend as the Silverstone Race to the Sky, and returned in 2015 as the Repco Race to the Sky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcus Turner</span> Musical artist

Marcus William Turner was a New Zealand singer-songwriter and folk musician. He performed at folk festivals in New Zealand, Australia, and overseas. He was also a presenter in the TVNZ children's television programmes Spot On, How's That and Play School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gin Wigmore</span> New Zealand singer

Virginia Claire Wigmore is a New Zealand singer and songwriter. Featured on the Smashproof single "Brother" in 2009, Wigmore went on to release five albums Holy Smoke (2009), Gravel & Wine (2011), Blood to Bone (2015) and Ivory (2018), with the first three having been chart-toppers on the New Zealand Albums Chart. She is known for her high pitched and raspy voice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Direen</span> New Zealand writer and musician

Bill Direen is a musician and poet. He manages the music group Bilders and lives in Otago, New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Burns</span> Musical artist

Rob Burns, earlier also known as Robbie Burns, is an English-born New Zealand bass player, author and academic. Burns' career spans five decades, encompassing musical genres such as pop, rock, R&B, soul, jazz, gospel, folk, and country. From the late 1970s until 1999 he toured and worked several sessions a week for artists of international fame, as well as for many major British TV shows, before embarking upon an academic career.

Rhythm and Alps is the South Island sister festival of Rhythm & Vines held in Cardrona Valley near Wānaka, New Zealand. The festival began in 2011 in Terrace Downs and in 2013 relocated to its current venue Cardrona Valley.

Ariana Rahera Tikao is a New Zealand singer, musician and author. Her works explore her identity as a Kāi Tahu woman and her music often utilises taonga pūoro. Notably, she co-composed the first concerto for taonga pūoro in 2015. She has released three solo albums and collaborated with a number of other musicians. She was a recipient of an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pisa Range</span> Mountains in the southern South Island of New Zealand

The Pisa Range is a mountain range in Central Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand. It lies on the western shore of the man-made Lake Dunstan and overlooks the town of Cromwell. Its highest point, Mount Pisa, is 1,963 m.

References

Folk musician's chance for glory, p. 48, Otago Daily Times, 24 Jan 2009