He is looking forward to Chin's Graffiti, premiered in late 2013 by Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. Described as a multi-layered celebration of the idea of street art, from primitive to refined, labyrinthine to stark, Graffiti will be a stimulating coda on June 21 after Henry Wong Doe has delivered Hindemith's Piano Concerto.
Tomorrow, opening the current season, Scholes looks back to one of ACO's most successful ventures from last year, by enlisting popular singers Hinewehi Mohi, Maisey Rika and Tama Waipara.
He sees the whole evening as a journey, setting off with Larry Pruden's Dances of Brittany, "a piece by a New Zealand composer that obviously looks to the other side of the planet."
Douglas Lilburn's Landfall in Unknown Seas, which follows, is "heading off in this direction", he says. "The composer is looking at Aotearoa from a European perspective."
He quotes the opening line of the Allen Curnow poem that Raymond Hawthorne will read between Lilburn's eloquent string writing - "Simply by sailing in a new direction you could enlarge the world."
Scholes is thrilled to be working with Hawthorne. Although the veteran actor is centrestage tomorrow, Scholes has many memories of working together on ACO's various operatic ventures, including last year's Lucia di Lammermoor.
"Raymond would come into the rehearsal space singing the aria, whether it was for soprano or bass," he laughs. "It was his way of showing how he wanted it to be and where he wanted it to sit dramatically.
"And then, after interval, Hinewehi, Maisey and Tama will give us beautiful songs that have been written on home soil."
This is not the first time that Waipara has sung with ACO. Scholes has known him since Waipara was a young clarinet student at Auckland University, when they were "kindred spirits in the clarinet world".
Now Waipara pens songs that have "an expansiveness that can build into impressive statements", he says. "They're quite enigmatic as well," he says, naming Golden Bullet and Cruise, from Waipara's superb 2009 album, Sir + Plus and the Requirements. "Then you get the lovely, evocative East Coast Moon."
Landfall in Unknown Seas is not the only Lilburn work that ACO is presenting in the composer's centennial year; come September, Scholes will play the Clarinet Sonatina, with pianist David Kelly.
"I learnt it off George Hopkins, for whom it was composed," Scholes says.
After some decades of playing Lilburn's music, Scholes still enjoys what he describes as its underlying subterfuge. "I like his harmonic language. The way that he builds up those plateaux and then moves on. Then there's the way that he shapes and structures things," he says. "The turns and shifts are never predictable. He doesn't go for the easy solution but always tries to find another angle."
Performance
What: Auckland Chamber Orchestra
Where: Raye Freedman Arts Centre, Silver Rd, Epsom
When: Tomorrow, 5pm
