Gillian Whitehead — New Zealand composer

Gillian Whitehead is one of the most important composers working in the Australasian region.

Her music has been widely performed and broadcast, and many pieces have been published or released on disc.

She composes opera, monodramas, work for orchestra, solo, choir and ensembles.

Gillian was one of five inaugural Artist Laureates of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and they host her website, which includes details of her work.

International New Zealand artist represents Gillian Whitehead.
www.inza.co.nz/GW.html
email: jamie@inza.co.nz

Highlights

• Gillian was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday honours in 2008.

• "… the highlight was Gillian Whitehead's Karohirohi for harp and orchestra.

  Inspired by the play of light on water, Whitehead evokes tantalising mysteries in sound. The landscape is, as ever, paramount, shot through with unexpected timbres. Chords and motifs are adroitly fractured, complex rhythms flow with their own truth and the large orchestra showed it could play with the delicacy of a chamber ensemble. " 2006

• In May 2004 Gillian was the first woman composer to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington.
• Gillian won the 2003 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for her work Alice a monodrama for mezzo-soprano and orchestra based on the life of Alice Adcock, great-aunt of New Zealand poet Fleur Adcock. This was the third time in 6 years she has won this country's most prestigious contemporary classical music award.

CDs featuring Gillian Whitehead's work

Ipu

Gillian Whitehead
Performers include: Judy Bailey, Richard Nunns, Tungia Baker, Georg Pederson.

A highly original work from a unique ensemble, employing pre-European Maori instruments as well as piano, cello and voice.

Based on a story by Tungia Baker, the ipu korero denotes a story-teller, someone who 'carries' stories as the ipu (gourd) carries food. The ipu is also used, as heard here, as a musical instrument. From this vessel flows the musical threads of two cultures, Maori and Pakeha, and a poetic love story.Listen to excerpts and purchase from opusCDs.com

Outrageous Fortune

Gillian Whitehead / Christine Johnston / Michael Joel, Conductor

An opera ‘raunchy rather than high class,’ relevant to Otago's history and appealling to a wide audience. The opera is a statement of the settlers themselves.

Purchase from SOUNZ

Taurangi: New Zealand Music for Flute and Piano

Bridget Douglas (flute) / Rachel Thomson (piano)

Features a major survey of works by New Zealand composers for flute solo and with piano.
Includes Taurangi by Gillian Whitehead. Listen to excerpts and purchase from opusCDs.com

New Zealand Women Composers Lontano / Odaline de la Martinez

Recordings by four of New Zealand's pre-eminent women composers
Includes Ahotu (O Matenga) by Gillian Whitehead. Listen to excerpts and purchase from opusCDs.com

NZ Composers

NZSO / Kenneth Young

Includes Resurgences by Gillian Whitehead. Listen to excerpts and purchase from opusCDs.com

You Hit Him He Cry Out

Dan Poynton

Melodic. Rhythmic. Ambient. Dramatic. Minimalist. Romantic. This is the music of leading New Zealand composers, performed with passion and subtlety.
Includes Lullaby for Matthew by Gillian Whitehead. Listen to excerpts and purchase from opusCDs.com

Spirit of the Land

Tower Voices New Zealand / Karen Grylls

Includes Taiohi Taiao by Gillian Whitehead. Listen to excerpts and purchase from opusCDs.com

Australian Cello

Georg Pedersen

Three major Australian works for solo cello by Banks, Kos and Whitehead are featured in this first solo CD by Sydney-based Danish cellist Georg Pedersen. The Kos and Whitehead works were written especially for Pedersen. Pianist David Bollard joins him for the performances of the Banks "Studies" and the "Five Short Pieces" by Keith Humble
Includes The Journey of Matuku Moana (1993) by Gillian Whitehead. Purchase from buywell.com

Cafe Concertino

The Australia Ensemble

Australia's foremost chamber music group plays a selection of Australian chamber music.
"The performance is superlative...Manutaki (Whitehead) is, I believe, one of the finest pieces of chamber music of the 1980s and is worth the price of the disc on its own." John Carmody, Sun Herald.
Includes Manutaki by Gillian Whitehead. Purchase from buywell.com

Biography — Gillian Whitehead

After studying with Peter Maxwell Davies (Australia and later UK), Gillian Whitehead worked as a free-lance composer in Europe and Australia as well as in her native New Zealand.

A steady stream of works over the years has established her as one of the most important composers working in the Australasian region.

Her music has been widely performed and broadcast, and many pieces have been published or released on disc.

Her works include:

• monodramas
• operas
• pieces for orchestra
• pieces for choir and orchestra
• pieces for other large ensembles

Also numerous other works:

• chamber works
• choral works
• instrumental  works
• solo works
• pieces with some improvisational content

In 1999 she was honoured by her country with the Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music, and in 2000 was honoured by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand as one of five inaugural Artist Laureates. They host Gillian's website.

She has been:

• 2005–2006: a year as Composer in Residence Victoria University
  School of Music as the inaugural resident in the Douglas Lilburn house.
• Composer-in-residence with the Auckland Philharmonia during 2000 and 2001.
• Head of Composition, Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney
• Mozart Fellowship, University of Otago, 1992
• Composer-in-residence, Victoria University, 1989
• Inaugural Composer-in-residence for Northern Arts (UK), 1977–1999
• Fellow of University of Newcastle, 1977–1999

Reviews — Gillian Whitehead

Alice

Working from a Fleur Adcock libretto that adroitly bridged history and poetry, the composer gave us a moving portrait of an Edwardian woman striking out for herself in a new land. …

Making full use of the orchestral resources, there is all the spaciousness of a new country here, with bold, savage sounds alongside folk-like song that seems to encapsulate all the sorrows of the world.

… Around me, listeners were visibly moved by the emotions and, yes, they smiled at its humour. William Dart, New Zealand Herald, Auckland, July, 2003

Quintet for winds and piano

The combination of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and piano is not easy to write for but Whitehead created a rich and bold sound world.

In the pre-concert talk, the composer had compared the style and structure of the quintet with a patchwork quilt. Certainly there were strong juxtapositions of musical gestures and colours, with most sections short and contrasting.

But it was not a restful quilt. Textures constantly changed and lines were often angular and energetic. There was interesting stylistic diversity too, with the chant-like melodies doubled in fifths and octaves, sounding more Gregorian than Maori to my ears. Anthony Ritchie, Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand

...Although Whitehead claims classical inspirations, the score was still rich in her subtle, rippling rhythms and customary burnished timbres, whether in lean unison or moments where the wind instruments clustered protectively around low, open piano sonorities.

The pungent exchanges in the pages surrounding Tania Frazer’s oboe cadenza were finely chiselled in space; they brought their own remembrances of things past as did the final bars, played out over inside-the-piano glissandi, where the composer’s flute and piano piece Taurangi came to mind. William Dart, New Zealand Herald, Auckland, July 2003