Working with a cookie-cutter theory of music

By GRAHAM REID


For Auckland composer and music teacher Warwick Blair it has been a long journey to come full circle. In the late 80s he won a scholarship to the Conservatorium in The Hague but during his studies was drawn to aspects of pop music of the period. He formed the band Glory Box and went to London.

"We had success there and recorded, we were a bit influenced by Dead Can Dance [the group helmed by Lisa Gerrard, who did the Gladiator soundtrack] and This Mortal Coil. It was taking techniques I had learned and trying to transplant them into a pop sensibility," says Blair.

"While there I did some ads and sang in the chorus of Stargate, and was in a band called Mandalay as keyboardist and orchestral arranger. Looking back, I think of it as first-hand research into pop culture, and now I'm trying to integrate that into the classical stuff I'm writing, similar to what I was doing before I went away, actually."

Blair returned to New Zealand in the late 90s and through film and soundtrack work, got into advertising. He did ad music for Sky Television and the New Zealand Navy, and provided the catwalk sonics for Karen Walker's show in 1998 based on the theme of electricity.

"But increasingly, advertising was unfulfilling. I got sick of the soulless quality of it and had to get back to what I was writing before I went away. It wasn't about art but was based on commerce."

For the past two years he has lectured in Sound and Popular Music at the university, introducing students to computer technology, electronic music, analysis of soundtracks and writing for film. But he has also returned to writing his own music.

On Friday, he will preview two pieces of a longer work, Accordion, with an ensemble which includes pianist Rae De Lisle, percussionists Frank Gibson and Ron Samson, and keyboardist Stephen Small. It will be conducted by John Elmsly.

The work tries to integrate aspects and sensibilities of popular music into the stripped-back forms of art music.

The piece Harp, for example, uses only two chords. "I've developed a new form called mosaic. It consists of cells which are made visible or invisible, depending on the shape imposed on them, like coming along with a cookie-cutter and whacking it on top.

"That gives the overall shape, but under that are cells which are constantly being repeated, although the cookie-cutter form determines whether we hear them or not. It's something I'm trying to develop."

Blair expects the five-movement Accordion - written on computers but transcribed and scored for live musicians - to be completed by early next year.

Performance

*Who: Warwick Blair

*What: Premiere of two works, Harp and Cry

*Where: Kenneth Myers Centre, Shortland St. Friday, Nov 19, 7.30pm

*Also: As part of the Version Festival, along with Omit, Plains, the sci hi arkestra; Kenneth Myers Centre, Dec 8, 7pm