Composer Sai Natarajan in his Palmerston North studio, which he jokingly refers to as his lair.
Composer Sai Natarajan in his Palmerston North studio, which he jokingly refers to as his lair.
When Palmerston North freelance composer Sai Natarajan looks up at the night sky he realises how incomprehensibly tiny we are in the face of the cosmos.
We are a speck of dust on a rock floating through space.
This was the image Natarajan had in mind when he wrote the orchestral work Stargazer. It won the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Choice Award at the 2023 Todd Corporation Young Composer Awards.
Natarajan was one of the eight finalists selected for the annual awards for composers aged under 25. His piece was played by the NZSO at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, along with other finalists’ pieces.
The NZSO then voted for their choice. The 23-year-old says given the orchestra has about 80 members, having them vote for his work was a big compliment.
Natarajan was also a finalist in 2022 with We Long For An Adventure.
Each finalist is assigned a mentor. Last year, Natarajan’s mentor was composer and University of Auckland lecturer Leonie Holmes. In 2022, it was 2014 Arts Foundation Laureate and composer of art music, Ross Harris.
Natarajan says learning to write orchestral music is a lifelong process. You don’t have to play the French horn to know how to write for it but you do need to know what the instrument is good at, how instruments sound together, the range of notes they can produce and how the notes will project.
It is a delicate balancing act between individual instruments.
He is conscious NZSO members are professional musicians who have been playing their instruments longer than he has been alive and wants to make a good impression.
Natarajan tries to give every musician a meaningful part and finds the players respond to this and visibly enjoy the music.
We Long For An Adventure will be performed in the NZSO’s Jubilation concert in May and June. The nearest venue for Manawatū music lovers is Wellington.
After beginning to experiment with composition at the age of 11, Sai Natarajan discovered this was where his passions lay.
In 2021, Natarajan completed a Bachelor of Music in instrumental and vocal composition with a specialisation in film scoring from Victoria University of Wellington.
His musical education began while still in the womb when his mother Uma Natarajan used to play him the CD Build Your Baby’s Brain - Through the Power of Music.
When he was 6 his parents got a piano from family friends as a favour - the friends were moving overseas and needed to get rid of it. The piano was out of tune.
Natarajan found himself gravitating towards it trying to play nursery rhymes by ear. So his parents took him to piano lessons. He says for the first four years he sucked as he lacked the self-discipline to practise.
But when he reached grade four he started to enjoy the pieces and his time playing. He also learned to play the violin.
When he was about 11 he started messing around with the software GarageBand to compose music and discovered he enjoyed listening to film music.
His father Nats Subramanian said to him why not be a film composer. Natarajan took on a delivery run and saved up to buy more professional software and learned how to use it.
He chose to go to Freyberg High School for its great music department.
He has been active on the composing scene since 2016. He has scored music for video games, YouTube/Twitch channels, podcasts, commercials, and even children’s audiobooks.
He signed up to Fiverr, a website for freelancers, and that was how he gained experience working with people, routines and revising. It was also how he got his first job scoring a video game.
Last year, he received $10,650 from the Earle Creativity and Development Trust for a new orchestral work for the Manawatū Sinfonia. It will be a love letter to the Manawatū artistic community.
He would like to see more focus on living New Zealand contemporary composers.
Judith Lacy has been the editor of the Manawatū Guardian since December 2020. She graduated from journalism school in 2001 and this is her second role editing a community paper.
