Second big win for youth choir
The New Zealand Youth Choir, with singers aged between 18 and 25, was named Choir of the World at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod in Wales on Saturday night (local time).
The choir blended waiata and kapa haka with a traditional choral repertoire.
It comprised about 50 singers, including former Columba College and University of Otago student Rosie Auchinvole, and operates on a three-year membership.
The award came hot on the heels of another win at the European Choir Games in Denmark last week, where the choir won the Grand Prix of Nations, after receiving a score of 97.5 from 100 in the folklore category.
The New Zealand Youth Choir wins Choir of the World 2025. PHOTO: FACEBOOK / NZ YOUTH CHOIR
At the time, Ms Auchinvole told theit was a "huge honour" to represent New Zealand internationally.
Labour arts, culture and heritage spokeswoman Rachel Boyack said the "outstanding young singers" were incredible ambassadors for New Zealand.
"I watched their winning set this morning after waking up to hear this very exciting news," she said.
"I've been lucky to see the choir perform this year, including at Waitangi on Waitangi Day, and it is incredible to see how much they've achieved — I am hugely proud of every one of them."
Also on Saturday night, New Zealand Youth Choir conductor David Squire was awarded the Jayne Davies Conductors Prize.
The New Zealand Youth Choir last won the Choir of the World title in 1999.
— APL/RNZ
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsroom
4 days ago
- Newsroom
Book of the Week: How to kill everyone in Scotland
It just so happens that the two best New Zealand novels of the year so far are both set in Britain, with Cambridge writer Catherine Chidgey imagining sinister goings-on in a village in England in her novel The Book of Guilt, and now Dunedin writer Liam McIlvanney happily killing off characters in a pretty seaside town in Scotland in his very, very good crime thriller, The Good Father. I suppose the accumulated bodycount in Chidgey's book is greater than in McIlvanney's novel but she sets her novel over 40 years, giving her a long time to send her characters to their deaths, and The Good Father is restricted to seven years. Even so, he gives it a good lash. You want murders, you've come to the right place. McIlvanney is chair of Scottish studies at the University of Otago. Right now he is on a book tour of Scotland, celebrating the very welcome news last week that The Good Father will be made into a TV drama series in Britain. Aye, I'll be wanting to watch that. I may already know how the story develops and what happens in the bloody end but I'll want to see the ways actors take on their roles—particularly Rory, a little boy who goes missing—and I'll really want to see what the town looks like. The book is set in Fairlie. Not our Fairlie, in the Mackenzie Basin of the South Island, which I am guessing is named after Fairlie in Scotland. It's got a beach. It's got peculiar houses lining the shore. McIlvanney describes it with a kind of atmospheric dread in The Good Father. It's a book of two halves. Almost nothing happens in the first half which is to say a family is left with nothing after their son, Rory, goes missing. There are very few clues. There are even fewer suspects. The story is narrated by Rory's dad, Gordon, an English professor. He and his wife Sarah are shattered and helpless and inert. 'People talk of grief as a numbness. With me it was more like vertigo. I felt permanently dizzy…Who took him? Where has he gone? Is he safe? Is he still alive? The questions wheeled like vultures in the sun.' Grief is like a sickness, and McIlvanney leans close towards the suffering. He writes of Rory's disappearance without sentiment, and it's heartbreaking. I suppose it makes sense that Gordon, because of his academic profession, would connect with great literature as he tries to make sense of Rory being there one minute and spirited away the next. 'Of all things, I thought about 'The Purloined Letter', Poe's short story where the massed ranks of the gendarme dismantle the minister's Paris apartment, searching for the stolen letter…Maybe, I thought, the police haven't exhausted every angle, chased down every lead.' That was fair, and I also accepted Gordon telling his university class, 'The challenge, then, for crime writers is to represent the gravity – in both senses of the word – of murder. The seriousness. The weight. What it really means to kill someone.' But McIlvanney doesn't leave it at that, and things get kind of meta as he expands on the tricks and methods of crime fiction. The Good Father is about the story of a missing boy. You want the tension and awfulness of the situation as it unfolds in Fairlie; you don't want the author intruding, and getting in the way. You want to read about Fairlie. 'White triangles of sail on the darkening firth.' McIlvanney is so good at place; the setting is visible, you can feel it and smell it. His dialogue is sharp and well-formed, and he's alert to patterns of speech. 'Hell mend him,' says one character; another describes a hard drinker, 'He was putting it away like a man with three arms.' There's a visit to Aberdeen and a visit to a town in Cork. But the plot doesn't actually thicken; McIlvanney keeps a tight rein on things, never overplays his hand. There is no body, and a strong possibility that Rory was abducted, but his continued absence means the plot keeps thinning out, leaves Gordon and Sarah empty-handed, chasing shadows and phantoms. All of Part 1 of The Good Father is expertly told. Part 2 is where the violence finally erupts. Something amazing happens, and things get even worse. The book takes on a darker tone and Gordon faces a stern moral test. He fails that test. There are four deaths. The first two are a misfortune but the others are more like a carelessness. Crime fiction depends on a final hurdle, and I'm not sure whether The Good Father takes it in its stride or crashes into it. McIlvanney seems to share the same credo as Eleanor Catton, when she approached the final hurdle of her novel Birnam Wood: kill everyone in sight. Still, the deaths are efficient, and skilful, especially the last murder: 'The knife slithered crisply through the meat of him. The hilt clipped a rib…His mouth yawed open; blood poured brilliantly out.' The victim died 'like a dog'. I'd feel sorry for a dog. I didn't feel much for this guy but neither did I obtain any kind of satisfaction from his death. Things had gone too far. McIlvanney is adept at killing the most precious thing in our lives—hope—but perhaps got a bit too enthusiastic at the prospect of an all-out slaughter. It gave improbability to The Good Father. It's one thing to build the tension but it's another challenge to release it. But the heart of the novel beats strong and clear. 'You think that families are held together by love,' Gordon tells us. 'That's not true. They're held together by secrets.' There is actually a fifth death in The Good Father. It's not a violent death. It takes place almost at the edges of this very good read, with its captivating scenery of Fairlie and its little note to the author's adopted country (New Zealand is pointed out on a globe as a 'long, slim country, italic-shaped'). It sends a message: good riddance to bad fathers. The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney (Zaffre, $36.99) is available in bookstores nationwide
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
‘Founding father' enormous in establishment of heavy metal
Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath perform during their The End Tour, at Forsyth Barr Stadium, in 2016. Photos: supplied From urinating on a historic national monument while wearing a dress, to biting the head off a bat and snorting a line of live ants through a straw, Ozzy Osbourne was famous for his infamy. The Black Sabbath frontman died yesterday, aged 76, and fans around the globe paid tribute to the "Lovable Prince of Darkness". Major fan and University of Otago music production senior professional practice fellow Hugh Harlow described Osbourne as "one of the founding fathers" of heavy metal. Mr Harlow said he had spent the past 27 years working as a sound engineer in recording studios and live productions with heavy metal bands in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He said Osbourne and Black Sabbath's influence on the heavy metal genre was "enormous". "Many people would claim that he and the other members of the band essentially established the genre of heavy metal. "There were other acts around the same time in the late 1960s, that you can also point to as being quite influential as the originators of heavy metal, but Black Sabbath really combined all of the elements that became central to the genre from that point on." When they released their second album, Paranoid, the band had started to "lean into their innovations", he said. "Guitarist Tony Iommi down-tuned his guitars, largely because of his plastic fingers. "He lost the tips of his fingers in an industrial accident in Birmingham when he was 17, and found it easier to play guitars when all the strings had been tuned down. "It made the strings slacker and easier to play. And that is now a staple of heavy metal. "It also led to a darker sound that people embraced. It matched the lyrics about magic and Satan and all that stuff." Mr Harlow said the band came from Birmingham, which at the time was very industrial, grim, and people had few aspirations. "They harnessed a lot of that industrial depression, doom and desperation. University of Otago music production senior professional practice fellow Hugh Harlow describes Osbourne as "one of the founding fathers" of heavy metal. "They were anti-establishment and quite transgressive against societal norms." He said Osbourne's on-stage and off-stage antics — like biting the head off a bat during a 1982 concert in Des Moines, Iowa — also threw him and the band into heavy metal folklore. "It's one of those things that really made him stand out as a performer. "It was the combination of all those things that they pulled together, that really led to this thing called heavy metal." Mr Harlow believed the world was lucky to have been able to farewell Osbourne at a recent Black Sabbath tribute concert, where he and the band performed with some of the largest rock and metal bands from around the globe. During his appearances on The Osbournes reality TV show, many people saw a man who was suffering the effects of "certain overindulgences" earlier in his career. "But the thing I found really fascinating was that even when he clearly was confronting certain issues, as soon as he stepped on stage, that all melted away. "The contrast between that image of what we saw on television, of a shuffling, slightly confused older man, was really contrasted with an energetic and focused performance. "Music was really a big part of him." The event culminated with Osbourne performing Mama, I'm Coming Home, which was from his solo career. "Arguably, it was one of the most emotional and touching performances I've ever seen come from Ozzy and from Black Sabbath. "I don't know whether he was necessarily aware that he was going to die, but certainly, that performance felt like a genuine farewell. "Ozzy and the band really paved the way for other heavy metal bands. "So we have lost one of the founding fathers of heavy metal."
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Gown comes to town
University of Otago graduates for 1925. — Otago Witness, 18.8.1925 Entertaining, not offensive The Otago University Council made a somewhat daring departure in allowing the annual graduation ceremony to be held this year in His Majesty's Theatre. There has always been a demand for much more accommodation than was available on these happy and interesting occasions, and in past years such buildings as the Choral Hall, Knox Church Sunday School hall, Burns Hall and the Allen Hall have been able to hold only a tithe of those anxious to witness the conferring of degrees. Whether it has been expressly stated or not the use of a larger hall has always been barred by the problem of discipline and the fear that crowds of undergraduates might turn the proceedings into pandemonium let loose. However, the students themselves undertook to maintain discipline on this occasion, and the council decided to try the experiment. After yesterday's experience it is safe to say the experiment is one that will be repeated. The proceedings were seemly, orderly, and prompt. The conduct of the students was exemplary. His Majesty's Theatre was crowded in every part. The graduates of the year were accommodated in the front seats of the orchestral stalls. The Chancellor (Mr T.K. Sidey MP) presided, and on the platform were seated the whole body of the teaching staff clad in their academic robes and also the members of the University Council. The irrepressible undergraduates early indicated their presence in the theatre and greeted friends and foes in customary unceremonious fashion before the formal proceedings began. The capping orchestra contributed welcome popular music. All joined in the singing of 'Gaudeamus." His Majesty's Theatre was well crowded last night for the second capping carnival. It is a period of hectic gaiety for all undergraduates, and they make the most of it, for time soon passes, and more examinations loom ahead. Thus, in their entertainment, that spirit that can be described by the words "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," enters them, and they present an entertainment that is bright, lively, and original — most certainly original. The farces were clever, and had a decided 'sting" in them, but there was nothing that could be taken exception to. The chorus was a wonderfully colourful display, and some weird disguises were to be seen. Taken all round, this year's carnival can hold its own with any that has been held in Dunedin, and it is well worth seeing. The entertainment will be presented to-night and again on Saturday night. — ODT, 24.7.1925 Compiled by Peter Dowden
