KEY POINTS:
Tuhonohono is a concept that goes well beyond the inspirational offerings of last Tuesday's Gillian Whitehead concert.
Six intrepid musicians unfolded eight works that merge Maori and Pakeha sensibilities in a way that has become Whitehead's signature.
The mutual support and weave that are so much part of these scores seemed to reach out from stage to audience and allow us to enjoy a special bond with the performers and their music.
Ramonda Te Maiharoa Taleni and Richard Nunns began by celebrating the dawning of a new order.
Behind them, projected on the wall, was the image of a flax kete with its weave uncompleted - a weave that was completed in the interplay of sumptuous mezzo and flickering koauau.
Flautist Ingrid Culliford and pianist Emma Sayers caught the brooding Taurangi, from sonorous chords to ethereal atmospherics, while Ashley Brown revealed a vibrant universe of sounds in the cello solo of The Journey of Matuku Moana. With disarming ease, Brown moved from Bachian chords and sobbing waiata to whispering harmonics and a sauntering jig.
After interval, Ben Hoadley's rippling bassoon told the tales of Nga ha o nehera, and Culliford was joined by Nunns in Hine Raukatauri , in which Maori and European flutes of all descriptions seemed to release all the birds of a legendary forest.
In the true spirit of tuhonohono, each performer accompanied the other with a gentle tapping of tukutuku.
After the forthright Sayers had plumbed new resonances in the piano prelude Arapatiki, a new work, Hinetekakara, found Te Maiharoa Taleni joining the remaining four instrumentalists.
This was a rare communion, the connecting thread being the consummate artistry of the singer.
In cadenza and collegial improv, the instrumentalists created their own weave, often in response to Nunns' primordial sonorities. One highlight, involving undulating scales of chords, seemed to suggest that Messiaen would have been most happy to search out birdsong in our forests.
Earlier on, Te Maiharoa Taleni's magnificent singing of Rona's Lament, from Whitehead's opera Outrageous Fortune was enthralling. With the lightest of backings, the singer inhabited Whitehead's restless, yearning lines as I have not heard in any other interpretation.
This poses a question: why are we still waiting for a professional production of this award-winning opera, premiered with such aroha and initiative in Dunedin almost 10 years ago?
