In tune with the world

By WILLIAM DART

John Rimmer is playing a computer-sound preview of Transcend, his new concerto for orchestra the Auckland Philharmonia will premiere tonight.

He's on the edge of my scruffy office chair with excitement, occasionally making apologies - "my computer won't make that cello any softer" - but patiently guiding me through to the final page where he admits he's written the music very much with specific players in mind: "That's for Lenny [percussionist Leonard Sakofsky], he can do wonderful soft snare drum rolls."

Transcend is the second major score Rimmer has produced for the AP since he took up their composer residency in 2001. "It was about time they had a big hefty piece written for them."

He admits his past two years have been full on - 2002 also saw the premiere production of his opera Galileo - and credits the residency for making it all possible.

"It's allowed me to write for the orchestra and get the music played. $27,000 a year is not a lot of money and I've done three works for that, as well as various other things.

"It's peanuts considering the opportunity it creates for composers. And, at the end of the process, the orchestra are going to play the piece they put their money into."

Critic Bernard Holland wrote a depressing report on the state of American orchestras in the New York Times last week. But for Rimmer, the orchestra is "the ultimate".

"The idea of engaging with a big audience is very appealing and, let's face it, you only do that via orchestra. It's the big ensemble meets the big audience."

The title of the new work spells out its challenge, Rimmer feels. "It's the idea of musicians going beyond their playing level and the audience going beyond the mundane.

"The Maori use the word 'wairua', meaning the spirit of something. We talk about people playing with spirit, or that there's a certain spirit behind the music. It's a matter of being transported somewhere, that sort of transcendent feeling."

Rimmer has had his own transcendent moments. One was when Boulez conducted Bartok, Schoenberg and Boulez with the BBC Symphony at the London Proms in 2001.

Another was local. "I was blown away when Henry Wong Doe played the Prokofiev Third with the Auckland Youth Orchestra. I went out to my car afterwards and I cried. I couldn't help myself. Here was a wonderful performer who took you well beyond the notes into the music, and that is where you get this transcendent thing going on.

"Music has the power to do this. It behoves each one of us to try it, get in there and see if it works for you."

It happens with his own music too, such as when Yvonne Lam played his spellbinding Dance of the Sibyl as part of the Michael Hill competition.

Then there was the thrill of hearing his Ring of Fire played by the London Sinfonietta back in 1976. "I still remember the first rehearsal. The work opens with this rushing flute gesture and I shot out of my seat. I couldn't believe anyone could play so well as Sebastian Bell did."

Rimmer, unaware of a name-sharing with a Cash-Carter country standard, affectionately calls Ring of Fire his "volcanic number"; a section of the score is being rearranged for the AP's Discovery concert in October where it should make an immediate connection with the youngsters in the audience.

Rimmer's eyes and ears are very much tuned into the world around him. "Most of the pieces I've done since I worked my way through the 12-tone thing have had some kind of influence from outside, something visual, a poem, nature, humanity, a psychological thing.

"These have triggered ideas that get translated into sound. It seems pretty clear to me that the modern audiences relate to that kind of link."

For instance, the inspiration for the work's central, shimmering chord came from an article in an astronomy magazine.

"The most powerful telescopes are picking up light 10 billion light years away and they're seeing huge veils of cosmic material, like massive curtains that move. I thought, 'Wow, I wonder if there's a sonic counterpart to that'."

The cosmic image may be apt for, with Rimmer's Transcend, the sky may well be the limit. Tonight's premiere will be the test.

Performance

* What: Auckland Philharmonia

* Where: Auckland Town Hall

* When: tonight at 8. John Rimmer is the pre-concert speaker at 7.15pm