Around the margins of the New Zealand Festival

GRAHAM REID considers some events at the upcoming New Zealand Festival which deliberately don't hit their target head on.

Contemporary opera increasingly draws its stories from contemporary life. American composer John Adams' Nixon in China, and his elaborate account of the death of wheelchair-bound passenger Leon Klinghoffer, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1984, are just two examples.

For those who seek to find metaphors in the contemporary rather than the historical world, these can be thrilling discoveries - although in the case of John Moran's The Manson Family perhaps too real.

Composers today have a battery of technology they can bring to bear: screens for montages and moving images, loop tapes and samples, backing tapes and electronic equipment ...

Opera isn't just the fat lady and our hero who, instead of dying after being stabbed, starts singing. It can be as non-linear as a contemporary movie and, with that technology on hand, need not even command a large ensemble.

Coming to Wellington for the New Zealand Festival 2002 in March is Failing Kansas, Mikel Rouse's one-man opera that uses as its broad storyline the sensational murder of the Clutter family in Kansas in 1959, which was the basis for Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood.

With films by Cliff Baldwin, Rouse takes his audience into the nightmare that was these murders in a small town in the Midwest, but also carves out a distinctive kind of opera which, as with Moran's Manson Family, evokes, rather than lays bare, the story through a series of songs and images which enter the minds of the killers.

Failing Kansas, says LA Times critic Mark Swed, "manipulates a more vernacular American musical style into a complex, non-narrative exploration of such dark American complexities, just the dark complexities that we hope our westerns will simplify.

"Opera deals with higher truths. And the particular path that Rouse is exploring has much promise for the advancement of a new and, in its own right, distinctly American art form."

Another musician whose distinctly American style will be heard at the festival is Laurie Anderson, whose music provides the soundtrack to Robert Lepage's production The Far Side of the Moon.

Another one-man show (the performer is Yves Jacques), Far Side is a journey into the relationships between two estranged astronaut brothers, one on each side of the east/west political divide, and comes with ingenious and effective staging.

The Hilliard Ensemble from Britain found a new audience when record producer Manfred Eicher suggested an unexpected pairing with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, whose chilly and ethereal tone had impressed jazz and world music audiences alike for the past 20 years. The album they recorded together, Officium, was an unexpected hit and reviewers and public alike were thrilled by the sound of saxophone weaving in and out of the vocal ensemble. A further album, Mnemosyne, confirmed the worth of the experiment.

While Garbarek appeared at the festival two years ago, this time he's with the ensemble, which will also be featured in their own concert of plainsong works and those by contemporary composers.

Coming at music from an angle is the speciality of jazz pianist Monty Alexander, who has worked alongside Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. Born in Jamaica, he brings reggae and funk influences and he has successfully played jazz in a reggae style with guitarist Ernest Ranglin. Alexander brings his own trio to the festival - catch him and see what he's up to would seem the best advice.

The festival also features several other artists from diverse cultures: Misia from Portugal specialises in fado, the popular folk music of the region; acclaimed Indian mandolin player U. Shrinivas brings his small ensemble for concerts which straddle the worlds of Indian classical music and jazz; Baobab and Cutumba Septeto from Cuba present high energy, percussion-driven rhythms; Argentinian bandoneon player Cesar Olguin performs the music of Astor Piazzolla and his countryman Nestor Marconi explores his own flavours on bandoneon; and Virginia Rodrigues brings the diverse sounds of Brazil to the concert stage.

And there's much more besides - traditional music from Mexico and surf-rock from Croatia, and a swag of locals.

Music from the margins, and then some.