“I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this in my life before, writing something like this. It was so direct. Even though I didn’t know him personally, I was living in the same situation, and I could feel how he must have felt, the whole business of him being brave, and trying to tell the truth which was a hard thing to do at that time and in that place. And then, being sick and dying, which I could only imagine. He called it the dust: finally, the dust has come down to the ground. I am diagnosed, he said.”

It’s February 2020. The beginning of the coronavirus pandemic worldwide.

China has been in lockdown since January. The doctor who blew the whistle on the pandemic, Dr Li Wenliang, has been denounced by the authorities and forced to sign a retraction: rumours are swirling about what this virus actually is and what on earth is going on; everyone is frightened, and everyone is glued to the doctor’s blog which bravely chronicles his descent into illness. He is dying. And it is on the day of his death, February 6, that Gao Ping gets a message from one of his friends that says, “Well, as a composer, as a musician, don’t you have anything to say about our current time?”

Dr Li Wenliang died that night. The next morning China woke up to huge Chinese characters carved into the snow on a riverbank: Farewell Dr Li Wenliang. Gao Ping was immediately inspired to write Bitter Cold Night, finishing it very quickly, an experience he says was unlike any in his life before. In this programme, he speaks about what lockdown was like in the interior of China close to the epicentre, as one of the first to go into lockdown in the world. He speaks of the tragedy and martyring of Dr Li Wenliang, later named a National Martyr by the government; he speaks about what it is like to be a musician working under the auspices of China’s Communist regime; and he speaks about his piece, Bitter Cold Night, and the struggle of searching for words.

Host: Charlotte Willson

Guest: Gao Ping

Brought to you by SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music

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Moments in time

A composer's response to critical moments in time: The moments when time pivots and history changes course. Charlotte Wilson presents this series about the music of Aotearoa New Zealand that follows moments in our history that have had an impact on us and changed or altered who we are.

If you have enjoyed listening to this episode, please help us by leaving a review.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Solidarity is a hugely important thing, in life, particularly in this period of ghastly late capitalism. If you don’t have solidarity within the cornerstones of justice and what’s right for people and workers, you don’t have very much to base a society on. So I think that’s the root of what I enjoy about protests. It’s the people, where everyone is feeling as one, and marching with a purpose. There’s something very powerful about that to me as a creative individual.”

New Zealand's biggest city has seen its fair share of protests and noise. And who better to capture the voice of that city than a composer who has never been shy of politics, who has a deep fascination with soundscapes and colours, textures, and the possibilities of the human voice. She is Eve de Castro-Robinson, and in 'Cries of Auckland', she begins with the cries that punctuated her childhood — the cries of the 'Star' newspaper boys on Queen Street — as a springboard for the cries that she herself has chanted in protest marches through the streets of Auckland through the decades.

In this programme, Eve talks about her relationship with Auckland, protests, sonic art, graphic design, her composing philosophy, and her development of a creative persona and voice that is always arresting — beautiful, colourful, thought-provoking, and above all, rooted in the real world.

Host: Charlotte Wilson

Guests: Eve de Castro-Robinson

Links & Resources

More details on the composer and the associated work here.

Link to the film of Cries of Auckland

This episode was brought to you by SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music.

Special thanks to RNZ Concert for providing the audio of Cries of Auckland performed by the Karlheinz Company

Production team

• Executive Producer: Diana Marsh
• Producer: Charlotte Wilson
• Sound Engineer: Phil Brownlee

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Moments in Time

A composer’s response to critical moments in time: The moments when time pivots and history changes course. Tau’ili’ili Alpha Maiava & Charlotte Wilson host this series about the music of Aotearoa New Zealand that follows moments in our history that have had an impact on us and changed or altered who we are.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I have no concept of what it is like to be involved in war. I can only experience it through their related experience. We have letters from them, very very dry day-to-day nuts and bolts, an insight into how boring it is for them in the trenches waiting and waiting and waiting for days. And then all of a sudden – WHAM !! Everything happens and people start dying. It’s unimaginable.”

In 1917, three New Zealand boys — brothers — were sent to the western front to fight in World War I. They never came home. They died in the Chemin des Dames, a place of legend, now a place of unimaginable horror carved into trenches, where infantry from both sides sheltered in caves. Their names were Charles, Vince, and Frank, and they were the great-great-uncles of Gareth Farr, composer, and percussionist. 

When former Adam International Cello Competition winner Sébastien Hurtaud approached Gareth with a proposal he couldn’t resist (“I’ll be your Rostropovich, and you can be my Shostakovich”), Gareth said, “You’re on!”. The result is Cello Concerto ‘Chemin des Dames’, a work that is as much about the men who died fighting WWI as it is about the women who suffered unbearably while looking after the home front.

Host: Charlotte Wilson

Guest: Gareth Farr

Links & Resources

More details on the composer and the associated work are here.

Link to the film of Chemin de Dames

This episode was brought to you by SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music.

Production team

• Executive Producer: Diana Marsh
• Producer: Charlotte Wilson
• Sound Engineer: Phil Brownlee

Special thanks to Rubicon for providing the audio of Chemin des Dames performed by Sébastien Hurtaud and the NZSO.

This podcast is supported by funding from The Stout Trust.

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Moments in time

A composer’s response to critical moments in time: The moments when time pivots and history changes course. Tau’ili’ili Alpha Maiava & Charlotte Wilson host this series about the music of Aotearoa New Zealand that follows moments in our history that have had an impact on us and changed or altered who we are.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.