In honour of New Zealand Music Month I've added three New Zealand musical friends to my 'Good People' Links down there on the sidebar-- and good people they all are.
Tenor Simon O'Neill is currently conquering the world. Most recently he's been understudying Placido Domingo in the Met's production of Wagner's 'Walkure' in New York. You can see him in the Kiri and Friends DVD from last year's Ayatollah Centre concert in Auckland with live-wire Helen Medlyn and Newmarket-based Opera Factory Chorus, and I've just discovered you can hear him next year in an NZSO Parsifal! Can't wait!
Soundtrack composer Marc Chesterman has composed music for Florian Habicht's films Woodenhead and Kaikohe Demolition, as well as collaborating in the improvisational trio Audible 3. Currently preparing to tour Europe with the Mau Dance company, I can confirm that Marc can produce "insanely cheerful" music as if he was born to it.
Hello Sailor are New Zealand's under-rated rock music legends. Variously considering themselves either a South Pacific Rolling Stones or a South Pacific Velvet Underground -- the latter well before such a tag was even fashionable -- at their best Hello Sailor sounded and sound like they can beat the world and it's brother. And quite apart from being a thoroughly decent chap, Sailor's Graham Brazier has written New Zealand's only real 'rebel song', Billy Bold. Graham's latest album 'East of Eden' comes highly recommended, as does fellow Sailor Dave McCartney's latest, on which 'Drunk With the View' finally gets recorded.
I heartily commend all the above to your eager attention.
1 comment:
Florian Habicht? I was in 4th form with him at school! Nice to see his name, and doing ok by the looks of it!
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