The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a large-scale setting of the Requiem composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is a music organisation based in Liverpool, England, that manages a professional symphony orchestra, a concert venue, and extensive programmes of learning through music. Its orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, is the UK's oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra. In addition to the orchestra, the organisation administers the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company and other choirs and ensembles. It is involved in educational and community projects in Liverpool and its surrounding region. It is based in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, an Art Deco concert hall built in the late 1930s.
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.
RNZ Concert is a publicly funded non-commercial New Zealand FM fine music radio network. Radio New Zealand owns the network and operates it from its Wellington headquarters. The network's playlist of classical, jazz, contemporary, and world music includes recordings by local musicians and composers. Around 15 percent of its airtime features live concerts, orchestral performances, operas, interviews, features, and specialty music programs, many of them recorded locally.
John Psathas, is a New Zealand Greek composer. He has works in the repertoire of such high-profile musicians as Evelyn Glennie, Michael Houstoun, Michael Brecker, Joshua Redman and the New Juilliard Ensemble, and is one of New Zealand's most frequently performed composers. He has established an international profile and receives regular commissions from organisations in New Zealand and overseas.
Jason Barry-Smith is an Australian operatic baritone, vocal coach, composer, and arranger. He works with organisations such as Opera Queensland, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Seven Network, and the Queensland Youth Choir.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) is a symphony orchestra based in Wellington, New Zealand. The national orchestra of New Zealand, the NZSO is an autonomous Crown entity owned by the Government of New Zealand, per the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Act 2004. It is currently based in the Michael Fowler Centre and has frequently performed in the adjacent Wellington Town Hall before it was closed in 2013. It also performs in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin.
John McCabe was a British composer and pianist. He created works in many different forms, including symphonies, ballets, and solo works for the piano. He served as director of the London College of Music from 1983 to 1990. Guy Rickards praised him as "one of Britain's finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies".
Max Kenworthy has performed recitals throughout the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and has undertaken recordings, broadcasts and tours in pipe organ, piano and conducting.
Simon John O'Neill is a New Zealand-born operatic tenor. In 1998, his image appeared on the New Zealand one-dollar performing arts postage stamp.
David Blair Hamilton is a New Zealand composer and teacher.
Frank Anderson Tyrer was an English concert pianist, composer and first conductor of New Zealand's National Orchestra.
City Choir Dunedin is an auditioned mixed-voice choir in Dunedin, New Zealand. It accepts singers of all age groups from the wider Dunedin community and performs large-scale classical choral works. The choir's membership grew from an initial 45 to around 120 as of 2012. The Choir is a member of the New Zealand Choral Federation, which was formed in 1985 to promote high quality choral singing in New Zealand.
Andrew Cantrill FRSA is a British-born organist and choral director. He has held cathedral positions in New Zealand and the United States, and was organist of the Royal Hospital School, Holbrook, Suffolk until September 2018. He is a Fellow, prize-winner and former Trustee Council member of the Royal College of Organists, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a tutor for the RCO Academy Organ School, an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, an active recitalist, and a sought-after broadcaster, writer and presenter.
David Andross Farquhar was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington.
Andrew Perkins is a New Zealand composer, choral conductor and teacher. He has had a number of works recorded and performed internationally.
Orchestra Wellington is New Zealand's oldest professional regional orchestra, based in the capital city of Wellington. It hosts an annual subscription series of concerts in the Michael Fowler Centre, performing varied repertoire from the Classical, Romantic and contemporary periods. The orchestra commissions and performs works by New Zealand composers, with John Psathas the current composer-in-residence. It also performs large choral works with the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, and regularly accompanies Wellington stage performances by the Royal New Zealand Ballet, New Zealand Opera, and Wellington Opera.
Dunedin Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Dunedin, New Zealand. It hosts an annual subscription series of concerts in the Dunedin Town Hall, performing repertoire from the Classical, Romantic and contemporary periods. It also regularly accompanies Dunedin stage performances by the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Opera Otago and City Choir Dunedin.
Anthony Jennings was a New Zealand harpsichordist, organist, choral and orchestral director, and academic. A proponent of the early-music movement, he advocated for authentic performing practices. He made several recordings of baroque music on the harpsichord. Musicologist J. M. Thomson wrote, that Jennings's "musical skills were wide-ranging and supported by a charismatic personality. A virtuoso organist, his performances of Romantic and contemporary repertory are remembered for their technical brilliance and musical power, but his special contribution was in the area of Baroque performance."
Leonie Joyce Holmes is a New Zealand composer and lecturer at the University of Auckland with an interest in music education.
