In Auckland, Imani Winds flaunted the form that's made them one of the hippest wind quintets on the chamber music circuit.
A sleek Le Tombeau de Couperin, including Ravel's lilting fugue, was an elegant concession to familiar Euro fare; elsewhere, the programme roved the world. The musicians entered one by one for Mongo Santamaria's Afro Blue, their individual flourishes leading to a funky vocal refrain, enthusiastically echoed from the stalls.
Each piece was smoothly introduced, if at times a little fulsomely. Did the moody textures of Paquito D'Rivera's Kites over Havana, with awkward spoken verse, really warrant 18 minutes?
Snapshots, by young New Zealand composer Natalie Hunt, received its 10th and last performance of a three-week tour. Inspired by African landscapes, these miniatures were effectively enhanced by sometimes visually distracting rainsticks and thunder drum. Hunt's atmospheric centrepiece, catching Victoria Falls through spray, offset the more riff-bound writing that surrounded it.
Valerie Coleman's Portraits of Josephine won hearts by evoking "Ol' St Louis" in Dixieland style, and sustained its elegiac ambience well, even against Mark Dover's fiery clarinet.
