NZ Youth Choir Wins CHOIR OF THE WORLD
In Wales last night, New Zealand Youth Choir director David Squire also won 'Most Inspiring Conductor'.
Choirs Aotearoa CE Arne Herrmann, who is travelling with the choir, commented, 'We are so proud of our mahi and our art earning this recognition on a global stage.
Our waiata are a taonga we have shared with audiences around the world, and the judges called them 'the true spirit of Aotearoa'. For us, coming from the other side of the world, representing our beautiful country and the people of Aotearoa … this win is just unbelievable.'
MORE ABOUT DAVID SQUIRE
David has taught music in schools for 35 years and in 2011 won a New Zealander of the Year Local Heroes Medal for services to music education. His ensembles have won many awards at local and international music festivals, such as the NZCF Big Sing. His Rangitoto College mixed-voice chamber choir, The Fundamentals, won the platinum award at the 2008 NZCF Big Sing Finale in Wellington – the first time for a mixed-voice choir. David's upper-voice choir from Kristin School, Euphony, was third in the open female choir competition at the International Musical Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales, in 2013. In 2019, Euphony represented New Zealand at the Budapest International Choral Festival, winning the Youth Choirs of Equal Voices category, coming 3rd in the open Musica Sacra category and was invited to compete for the Grand Prix. David's Westlake Boys High School lower-voice choir, Voicemale, won the Grand Prix at the 2nd Leonardo da Vinci International Choral Festival in Florence in 2018, and David won the award for best conductor at this event. David has been music director of the Westlake Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, and it has won more gold awards at the KBB Music Festival than any other ensemble. In 2014 the orchestra was placed first equal at the Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival in Vienna.
David is also the director of the Auckland Youth Choir, Vice-Chair of the New Zealand Association of Choral Directors, is a national conducting advisor and tutor and was a governance board member of the New Zealand Choral Federation for 9-years. He completed his undergraduate study at the University of Auckland, with an emphasis on conducting and composition, later graduating with a Master of Music degree with first class honours in choral conducting. He studied singing with Isabel Cunningham, Glenese Blake and Beatrice Webster, and conducting with Karen Grylls and Juan Matteucci. He has sung with many top choirs in New Zealand, including the Auckland Dorian Choir, University of Auckland Chamber Choir and the New Zealand Youth Choir. He was a founding member of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the V8 Vocal Ensemble.
David has previously led the New Zealand Youth Choir on four international tours, including the USA and Canada in 2013, which featured performances of the War Requiem by Britten in the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, as well as concerts in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, New York and Washington DC. In 2016 the choir gave concerts in Singapore, the Czech Republic, France and the UK. Tour highlights included singing high mass at Notre-Dame in Paris, a lunchtime concert at Windsor Castle, and producing a live DVD recording of a well-received concert at St Johns Smith Square in London. The choir also participated in the Festival of Academic Choirs in Pardubice, Czech Republic, winning every category it entered, as well as the prize for outstanding vocal culture, and then going on to win the Grand Prix. At the end of 2019 the choir embarked on a Pacific tour aboard the cruise ship MS Maasdam, taking in Tonga, Niue, Fiji, New Caledonia and Sydney. In 2022 the choir toured Australia, presenting performances in Tasmania, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and at the Sydney Opera House.
As a freelance musician, David has conducted several local ensembles, including the Auckland Philharmonia and the St Matthews Chamber Orchestra. He was the assistant musical director of the New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir, founding musical director of the Auckland Youth Big Band, chairman and administrator of the KBB Music Festival, and a live performance reviewer for Radio NZ Concert. David is often involved in session and recording work, particularly as a conductor, adjudicator, clinician and singer and was choir director on the recent New Zealand film, Tinā. He has also served as the choir director for Synthony, and is the chorus master for the International Schools Choral Music Society based in China.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Spinoff
6 hours ago
- The Spinoff
The New Zealand Youth Choir global award shows there's soft power in more than just sports
The New Zealand Youth Choir was recently awarded the title of 'Choir of the World' at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales. Labour arts spokesperson Rachel Boyack reflects on her experiences touring with the choir over 20 years ago. If you didn't hear the news this week, our beloved New Zealand Youth Choir won the 'Choir of the World' title at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales. The Llangollen Eisteddfod is the crème de la crème, the Holy Grail if you like, of choral competitions, and winning the title is an outstanding feat for a national choir from a small country like Aotearoa. I woke up to the news last Sunday morning, and after shedding a tear, I watched the choir's winning set, swelling with pride for these outstanding young singers and how they represent us so admirably on the world stage. I've been lucky to spend time with the choir this year and to see them perform a number of times. This has included watching the choir performing live on Breakfast TV at Waitangi on Waitangi Day, and filling Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland in an extraordinary farewell concert. I've been struck by the joy the choir has when they perform, and the obvious respect they have for each other, and the choir leadership. It's hard to pull together a group of fifty 18-25 year-olds from across New Zealand and turn them into a well-oiled team, but that is exactly what music director David Squire, assistant music director Michael Stewart and vocal consultant Morag Atchison have done. The New Zealand Youth Choir was established in 1979 by Dr Guy Jansen, with professor Peter Godfrey acting as its first conductor. Both giants of the choral music scene in New Zealand. The purpose of the choir is to develop choral excellence among some of the country's most talented young singers, and contribute to other musical goals, like commissioning new work from New Zealand composers, and training the next generation of global opera singers, conductors and music teachers. The choir quickly cemented itself on the international choral scene, winning big awards from the very beginning, being invited to sing at significant New Zealand events, and performing with the likes of Dame Kiri te Kanawa at Wembley. According to my mother, I first heard the choir singing during the summer of 1989-90, while holidaying in St Arnaud as a 10-year-old. While I have many memories of tramping around Lake Rotoiti with my brother and father, and staying overnight in the hut, I don't recall the concert! It wasn't until I was age 13 that I fell in love with the choir listening to their first album, Te Roopu Rangatahi Waiata o Aotearoa (1992), which featured choral works from some of New Zealand's greatest composers: Jack Body, David Griffiths, Douglas Mews, and prolific choral composer, and alumni, David Hamilton. I would listen to that album every day, probably driving my family mad! I was entranced by the youthful but rich voices, the incredible blend of the choir, and the perfection of the intonation and timing. This was a craft I wanted to master. At that young age, I set myself a goal to be selected for the New Zealand Youth Choir and joined every choir possible throughout my teenage years to achieve it. After spending two years as a member of the New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir, and beginning music studies at the University of Auckland, I was selected to join the choir as a 19-year-old and was privileged to be a member from 2000-2004, including two international tours, one to the United States, and a later tour of Europe, where we traversed Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria and finally a week in St Petersburg and Moscow in Russia. Among many formative moments from that European tour in 2004, one sticks out. On our way to Europe we stopped off in Singapore and performed to a packed town hall of high school students – our first concert of the tour. It wasn't the European Art Song, or Bach's motets, or Antonio Lotti's famous baroque masterpiece 'Crucifixus' that led to the audience of high school students giving us a standing ovation. It was a performance of 'I te timatanga', gifted to the Choir by the Wehi Whanau and that tells the story of the separation of Ranginui from Papatūānuku, that led to a hall full of screaming schoolgirls on their feet. The kind of response usually reserved for a 1990s boyband! As a choir girl it wasn't something I had ever experienced before. We described ourselves as 'the All Blacks of the singing world.' Every time the choir travelled overseas it would return with a trophy haul that required the building of a new cabinet, and accolades from top international choral judges. Pulling on the black and silver uniform and representing our country overseas was a thrill, and one of the privileges of my life. While the choir receives funding from Creative New Zealand, they have to rely on fundraising and personal contributions from choir members to travel internationally. That has always felt inequitable given the work the choir does to promote New Zealand internationally, especially when compared to some award-winning sporting codes. It also means some singers may miss out on being involved in the choir due to financial constraints. The current government has continued the work of the previous Labour government and released a draft Arts Strategy: Amplify. One of the 2030 targets listed in the strategy is for New Zealand to rank among the top 25 nations in the world for culture and heritage soft power, resulting in high-value cultural tourism and exports. It is an ambitious target, and I support it. The New Zealand Youth Choir is an excellent example of that soft power in action. Everyone at Llangollen in Wales was talking about the New Zealand Youth Choir, with reports on the choir broadcast all over the media in the region, and globally. Social media lit up with videos of the choir's performances, and the incredible haka they performed for their music director David Squire after their win was announced. The New Zealand Youth Choir, and their sister choirs, the New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir and Voices New Zealand rely on government funding from Creative NZ. Currently, they receive multi-year funding from the Totara Programme, which CNZ is ending. While I am confident that the choir's success on the world stage will ensure their funding continues, having the certainty of multi-year funding means the choirs can operate with confidence, plan international tours and commission new works by New Zealand composers. And this alumni, and the rest of New Zealand, can continue to be so very, very proud of our world-class New Zealand Youth Choir.
Otago Daily Times
7 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Review: Beached as, bro
Is Hideo Kojima the world's last rock-star game developer? It's difficult to think of anyone else these days who would have the clout — and get the funding — to make a triple-A game as extremely idiosyncratic as Kojima Production's Death Stranding 2: On The Beach. To be fair, maybe the funding part was easy. The first Death Stranding (2019) sold 19 million copies, so plenty of people were on board to steer The Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus (captured here again down to the minute details of the moles on his face) as he lugged packages across a post-apocalyptic United States. This reviewer missed out though, so coming into On the Beach, I had a bit to catch up on. Oh boy. So: the dead have returned to the world of the living as ghostly "BTs" (beached things); they brought with them a crystalline substance that has empowered new technologies but ruined others (like aeroplanes); you can see them with a bit of tech that requires you to carry around an unborn baby in a little pod; and if the BTs ever manage to consume a living being (which they seem keen to), something akin to a nuclear explosion goes off. As a result, there was a bit of an apocalypse, which ended up with the world's remaining population reduced to huddling in isolated bunkers and cities, cut off from one other and relying on porters, like Reedus' character Sam, to make lonely supply deliveries between them across a perilous landscape. In the first game Sam made his way one load at a time across the US, connecting these settlements to the "chiral network" (a sort of tech-magic internet) handily averting the extinction of humanity while he was at it. At the outset of the second, he's something of a fugitive (having run off to illegally raise his little pod-pal, Lou), but is soon brought back into the fold to continue the mission of spreading the chiral network, this time into Mexico — and then, thanks to some more Death Stranding-world magic — across the whole of Australia. So yes, in a way you could simulate the experience of playing this game by joining the exodus across The Ditch and getting a job with Australia Post — but you'd miss out on a lot. Much of the game is spent just navigating Sam by night and day across the graphically gorgeous wilderness of Australia (filled with what seem to be authentic Aussie voice actors, which is nice), which serves up hazards such as local earthquakes, storms, flash floods, bush fires, and just plain overbalancing on a scree slope due to your towering backpack, faceplanting, and sliding 30m downhill — likely one of the more wince-inducing experiences in gaming. (Oh, and there's the magic rain that rapidly ages things, too.) Sam has plenty of options to facilitate his journey, from ladders and climbing ropes up to more high-tech options like hovering cargo platforms and off-road vehicles, though everything he brings along with him must be managed as part of his overall load. It's gameplay of quiet satisfaction: planning your route, packing well, the often Zen-like quality of the journey itself, and the "job well done" of cargo delivered undamaged at the destination (uh, or maybe just a bit damaged — sorry, there were these ghosts). Your fellow porters are with you along the way, too. Though they never enter your game directly, you're able to share resources and supplies with other Beach players via the game's "Strand" system, which can include answering quests for aid, leaving signs or structures for others to find, completing your fellow players' deliveries, or collaborating on larger projects like road-building. There's a little buzz to the game letting you know that scores of people have used a bridge you built, but it's possibly even cooler to learn that a single player elsewhere in the world stumbled across and took shelter in the little hut you left halfway up a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Your travel vlogging, though, is interrupted by regular combat encounters out in the wilds, both with human banditry and the BTs. The former provide some fun, if standard, third-person melee / ranged / stealth encounters, with the wrinkle of occasionally finding yourself in a four-man brawl while wearing a backpack the size of a fridge. BTs though, while nicely terrifying, are a bit of a pain in the butt, employing a "tar" mechanic that often leaves Sam struggling to move, and are most heavily damaged by grenades that can be tricky to aim. They're also your opponents for most of the game's boss fights, which can be exercises in frustration until you adapt to the rhythm of managing your inventory on the go while fighting. Actual gameplay, though, is only so much of the On the Beach experience. If Kojima is a rock star, he's David Bowie — arty, outre and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, no matter how weird. Get ready for Hollywood directors galore, forensically motion captured, to drop in as actors, Lea Seydoux to keep crying a Single Tear of Emotion while wearing a scarf that's a spare pair of hands, and red-hooded cultists schlepping their evil leader around through phantom tar in a Gothic techno-sarcophagus. Careening from bizarre to moving and back, the story makes the most of the possibilities of a world in which the afterlife is real, technology is basically magic and people can come back from the dead, taking big swings at big themes of loss, the importance of human connection and the inevitability of our extinction — all while pulling moves like "so this character is called Dollman, he's a possessed ventriloquist's dummy. Just roll with it". While it is a lot (and you sometimes have cause to wonder if anyone ever tells Kojima he has had a bad idea), it just about all comes together as something that's often quite profound. Perhaps more striking than this though is that as a gaming experience, it's so very singular — the sort of different that's normally destined to be ironed out of games with giant budgets that need the broadest possible appeal. You're simply unlikely to play anything like Death Stranding 2 until, well, probably Death Stranding 3. So hitch up your pack, head for the horizon and think heavy thoughts about how human connection is all we have as our species heads into terminal decline. Oh, and also, Norman Reedus' bladder meter is full; press circle to have him pee in a bush. By Ben Allan From: Sony / Kojima Productions
RNZ News
2 days ago
- RNZ News
'Toitū te reo': All welcome as national Māori language festival returns
Tame Iti speaks to a packed out crowd at Toitū Te Reo 2024. Photo: Supplied / Toitū Te Reo Organisers of Aotearoa's national Māori language festival want people of all ages and ethnicities to "toitū te reo" - to uphold the language - as the kaupapa returns for its second year. Toitū Te Reo, described as a two-day "celebration, inspiration, education, and activation of the language and culture", will take place in Heretaunga Hastings on November 13-14. Festival founder and director Dr Jeremy Tātere MacLeod (Ngāti Kahungunu) said the kaupapa, born out of a desire to uplift te mana o te reo Māori. was shaped by growing pressure on the language in recent years. "It was morphed into a festival during the time where the language was under attack from left, right and centre," he told RNZ. "And it was a response to that, but it was a positive response. It was, how we can unite the country and bring people together, but also bring ourselves together as Māori." Toitū Te Reo is the evolution of Te Reo ki Tua, a revitalisation symposium hosted in the heart of Ngāti Kahungunu. "It's a street festival. It's unapologetically Māori, yet incredibly accessible to non-speakers," MacLeod said. "We want young, old, locals, visitors, and those from every ethnicity to come along and have a go at te reo Māori." Toitū Te Reo - Aotearoa's national Māori language festival- director and founder Dr Jeremy Tātere MacLeod says the kaupapa is a "transformative bicultural opportunity for everyone." Photo: Supplied / Toitū Te Reo Organisers said the festival welcomed about 10,000 people last year , from reo champions to absolute beginners. Despite receiving funding in 2024 from the previous government, this year's kaupapa will go on without it. "It's a different climate," MacLeod said. "We were lucky last year with some residual funding from the former government, but that funding is not available under the current government. "So it means we've had to work extra hard to find people to support what I still believe is a transformative, groundbreaking initiative." He said the shift has only deepened the resolve of the organising team, but it raised questions about who was responsible for backing the language. "My challenge to us as Māori, with regards to mana motuhake - if we really believe in our language and we want to invest in a national forum that uplifts but also inspires a lot of language activists across the country - then support it. Instead of us being booted like a political football between central government back to iwi and vice versa." "If we keep harping on about how important the language is, then we need to commit to it and show some leadership… Stop talking about the language and commit to uplifting it." Photo: Supplied / Toitū Te Reo Toitū Te Reo will be host to a variety of kaupapa, including kapa haka performances, wānanga, symposiums, kai, toi Māori, and live podcast recordings, all designed to meet people wherever they are on their reo journey. "There's no other forum in the country that brings this many people together purely for the language revitalisation plight," MacLeod told RNZ. "It brings together some of the country's most recognised exponents, but also grassroots language champions, not necessarily people who sit in academic institutions… It brings together a fantastic mix, as well as non-Māori who have committed their lives to the re-emphasis of the language." MacLeod said regardless of where you sit on the language proficiency spectrum, "everyone requires a bit of inspiration". "We require a bit of activation. We require a little bit more education and an opportunity to celebrate and connect." MacLeod speaks from personal experience. He grew up in Brisbane with parents who were part of the generations who lost their language. "I remember very well how hard it is to acquire te reo Māori," he said. "And I still have vivid memories of what that was like. It's not easy." That's part of why accessibility is a core focus of Toitū Te Reo, he said. "We've tried to make it as welcoming as possible," "Even if you're fluent or if you're in the middle, there's dedicated symposium areas and lots of different presenters, panels to cater for everyone. But even the most fluent need to do some work to maintain their reo." Photo: Supplied / Toitū Te Reo While the scale of the festival will be slightly smaller this year, MacLeod said Toitū Te Reo is about national reach, but from a provincial base. "National kaupapa don't just belong in Wellington and Auckland. They can be hosted in provinces too. "When Ngāti Kahungunu established the National Māori Language Revitalisation Symposium, it had a domino effect, several tribes went on to establish their own. And I feel that'll be the case with Toitū Te Reo in time. Why can't we have several celebrations of the language and culture around the country?" With the kaupapa taking place in four months time, MacLeod is hoping for an even bigger turnout than last year. "Toitū Te Reo will inspire you. It will educate you. It will entertain you. It will activate you. It will strengthen you," he said. "And it will provide a platform for thousands to come together and celebrate the language that is quite often attacked from all quarters of this country." Toitū Te Reo 2025 will take place in Heretaunga Hastings CBD on 13-14 November. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
