Music for Matariki

In 2024 Resonance Ensemble celebrated the Māori New Year with a concert of music by New Zealand

composers. It was a very successful venture for both audience and players, so the orchestra and

conductor Tony Ryan will present another programme of New Zealand music at The Piano, 3pm, 15

June, the Sunday before this year’s Matariki holiday.

The first part of this concert will feature John Ritchie’s colourful and descriptive Papanui Road Overture,

written in 1987 a few years after the composer had moved to live near this busy Christchurch street.

Besides being one of Christchurch’s most well-known composers, John Ritchie founded a string

orchestra which eventually became what is now the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. On his ninetieth

birthday in 2011, the CSO marked the occasion with a special concert which included some of Ritchie’s

own music as well as a work specially written for the occasion by his son Anthony. Resonance

Ensemble’s 2025 programme includes Anthony Ritchie’s evocative 1996 composition Albatross in Flight.

John Ritchie’s 90th birthday concert fourteen years ago, opened with another specially commissioned

piece by another former student of John Ritchie, our conductor, Tony Ryan, whose Fanfare for John

opens this year’s Matariki programme.

The main work in this year’s concert is also by Tony Ryan. His Saxophone Concerto will be played by

Auckland saxophonist Mark Hobson for whom the work was originally written. The solo part is for

soprano saxophone rather than the more familiar alto or tenor, and the concerto is as much a

spectacular orchestral showpiece as an opportunity for the soloist to demonstrate his virtuosity.

Music by Claire Cowan and Pieta Hextall completes this year’s line-up of New Zealand composers. Claire

Cowan’s The Stolen Stars of Matariki was originally written for the NZSO to accompany a story by

Miriama Kamo. Resonance Ensemble has invited Leah Williams-Partington of Loopy Tunes fame, to

narrate the story, making this concert highly suitable for young people as well as our regular audience.

Pieta Hextall’s quirky and mischievous take on music for a wedding, with its prominent saxophone part,

will make her Wedding Mixtape a fun encore for our soloist, and a light-hearted finale to end this

unique and celebratory concert.