Is it patronising to call Auckland Chamber Orchestra the little orchestra that could?
It shouldn't be. Operating on a budget that's tight even by arts organisation standards, the ACO does a remarkable amount with remarkably little, featuring bold programming and a commitment to New Zealand music that other, better funded bands might take note of.
Perhaps the most artistically significant of the ACO's concerts are its "portraits" series, each dedicated to a single Kiwi composer. The shows have featured a who's who of compositional talent including John Psathas, Gareth Farr and Anthony Ritchie.
There are compelling artistic reasons for these concerts, says ACO music director Peter Scholes.
"When you hear a whole programme of one composer you suddenly begin to understand their language," he reasons.
"You start to see their vocabulary, their grammar. You're hearing more of the conversation, the twists and turns and the way the music unfolds, which one work may not give you."
Composer Helen Bowater features in Auckland Chamber Orchestra's next composer portrait concert.
The first of this year's portraits is dedicated to Helen Bowater. Why Bowater?
"She's got a great imagination and sense of colour and use of sound," Scholes says. "And right through to the detail, it's very skilful and really well crafted. But above all, it's imaginative."
Bowater describes her music as emotionally extreme.
"It could be exuberant and ecstatic or complete fun, or it could be quite dark. When I write, it has to have a strong emotional centre," she says. "For me it's the most significant form of personal expression in my life."
There are times, though, when a composer needs to express someone else's emotions. The Ghost of Oedipus, a solo piano piece that opens the ACO concert, was a 50th birthday gift from the late heritage architect Bruce Petry to his partner, Andrew Douglas. How do you write a musical birthday card?
"I read sections of Andrew's thesis," says Bowater. "He referred to the ghost of Oedipus, so the piece was inspired by the solitary figure of Oedipus moving through urban spaces, reacting to external urban rhythms.
"He joins the dance of urban rhythms. There's a four-note figure that refers to Rocky Bay [on Waiheke Island, where Petry and Douglas lived, and Bowater still does], a kind of chiming of birds. It's an amazing sound, that chiming at twilight."
Petry framed the score but Bowater only ever played it using the Sibelius computer program. That makes Sunday's concert its world premiere. Ghost of Oedipus is not alone; there are a dismaying number of first performances.
In the 1990s, Bowater was the Otago University Mozart Fellow and the APO's composer-in-residence and in 2008/9 she was the New Zealand School of Music's resident composer but in recent years, she's been somewhat neglected.
Her music deserves better; it's never less than intriguing and is often quite wonderful, particularly her works for solo instruments. The composer seems philosophical about her low profile, preferring to let opportunities come to her, rather than promoting herself.
"You just wait for the appropriate time," she says. "[A performance] usually comes along, even if it's a few years later."
Or a couple of decades. Violin Concerto for 10 Players, another premiere, was written in 1996. But Bowater is hardly alone among Kiwi composers who struggle to be heard; she acknowledges the importance of Scholes and his orchestra in promoting New Zealand music.
Amazingly, Auckland Chamber Orchestra's concerts are free to attend. ACO is funded entirely from donations and charitable contributions. The orchestra does no advertising and to get a ticket you have to be on its email database (join through the ACO website). It's the opposite of how most arts organisations run.
"Of course I'd love it if people paid $50," says Scholes, "but we found trying to communicate with a wide enough group of people to find the odd one who likes what we do and is prepared to pay that kind of money was costing us more than we were able to get back. This way we can pull in an audience who appreciate what we play and we get healthy donations."
By giving music away, though, isn't Scholes training an audience not to pay for arts events or, worse, devaluing the music and musicians?
"I think the arts need to be accessible across the board, for whatever money you have. I look at the art gallery as an example," he says. "You've got to pay for the superstar stuff but it doesn't stop you from having a really fine artistic experience, walking around the gallery, and that's free. I think it's important that the free stuff isn't just Music in Parks, but actually there's a full range."
Lowdown What: Auckland Chamber Orchestra, Composer Portrait — Helen Bowater Where & When: Raye Freedman Arts Centre, Sunday, June 17
