Composer coming home

Press, 28 February 1978, Page 10

Composer coming home

The New 7 Zealand composer, Gillian Whitehead, will return home this month for the first performance of her opera, “Tristan and Iseult.” Miss Whitehead, who left New Zealand 13 years ago, has received a grant from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council to pay for the trip. While she is in New Zealand she will act as an adviser on the production of the opera, and spend a term teaching composition at Auckland University. The recipient of two previous New Zealand Arts- Council grants, some funding from a private patron, and a grant, from the Vaughan Williams trust, Miss Whitehead has built a solid reputation in London and is now able to live mainly by composing. She sometimes supplements her income ■ with free-lance proof-reading for publishers, but most of

her time is spent fulfilling commissions. “Tristan and Iseult,” which will have its first performance at this year’s Auckland Festival, was based on the oldest versions of the legends about the French knight, Tristan, Miss Whitehead told the NZPA. For part of her time in New Zealand Miss Whitehead will stay with her family in Ruakaka. “I will remain in New Zealand about six months and then return to London. I probably could stay in New Zealand and produce a lot of commissioned work in two years. “But I think it would be unfair to those w'ho remained in New Zealand. I have established myself in London now and I would expect people to resent me in New Zealand if I tried to snap up the available commissions,” she said. Her music was strongly

influenced by her New Zealand background, Miss Whitehead said. “I can’t put my finger on what distinguishes my work from that of a British composer of my generation. But there is a difference. Partly it is the warm feeling ’ I have towards New Zealand because I am away from it. “I have given several pieces Maori titles, which I probably would not have done if I were living in New Zealand.” Soon she is to start work on a piece commissioned by the British Arts Council for the Contemporary Baroque Ensemble, whose leader is a New Zealander, Alex Cowdell. In her first years in London, as a student of Peter Maxwell Davies, Miss Whitehead had practically no contact with New Zealanders. “Mr Davies met me at Southampton when 1 ai

rived, and in my first weeks in England I formed some of the friendships that 1 rely on now. It has only been in the last three or four that I have come into contact with New Zealanders in music here. “I’m looking forward to the chance to look at New Zealand again, and observe developments at first hand." While Miss Whitehead is in New Zealand her song cycle called “Riddles,” based on a poem by Bill Manhire. of Wellington, will have its debut. Miss Whitehead lives in Bayswater, but spends several months each year in the Orkneys, where, she says she ran work five linin', heftpr than in London She has composed a wtite variety of music, in'hiding i,vn Operas. t hambri itiiHit. orchestral fblisii a*’d most recently eip> irdtiii- ninsiti.