Awards organisers pull out stops for record numbers
The auditioning process for the Gold Guitars began across five venues yesterday and convener Philip Geary said their systems for handling this year's 829 entries were reasonably good, but could be better.
Given the growth of the awards, Mr Geary said the awards committee was engaging a software writer to create a new program to help organise the contestants, judges' scores and the winners in each of the 31 categories.
"[Something] that should just spit everything out, and all we need to do is look at it and confirm it, and that's it," he said.
Having worked the awards for 30 years, this was not Mr Geary's first rodeo and he and the other organisers made sure the stage and setup were the same across the auditioning spaces to keep the competition regulated.
"We're just trying to create the same environment of what they would do at the finals anyway, so that everybody's on the same level playing field," he said.
Gore Country Music Club music committee convener Laurel Turnbull said due to the record number of entries they had engaged all four venues for the auditions as well as added an extra van to act as a courtesy coach between venues.
The 12 judges were distributed between the Gore RSA, Gore Town & Country Club, Gore Baptist Church and Calvin Community Church for auditions, but would come together at the club for the finals on Saturday and Sunday nights.
Invercargill-raised and Dunedin-based musician Holly Muirhead, 21, who said she had first entered the contest when she was 13, said the competition was massive this year.
"When I was back in [the] intermediate [section] there were a lot less contestants and now it's like every class is 50 people," she said.
"I don't know how the judges do it."
She said the competition had been growing gradually every year and it was nice to see so many new faces in the songwriter and senior (or classic) sections.
Mr Geary said the competition's growth, particularly in the younger, intermediate section, happened about 10 to 15 years ago with the rise in popularity of country rock, such as Taylor Swift.
"I think it was three years ago [the intermediate section] increased by 30%, which is great, which is big," he said.
Ms Muirhead said she agreed with the Taylor Swift effect and said it was the American star's crossover between country and pop which attracted new audiences.
She said another of her favourites, five-time Grammy Award nominee Kelsea Ballerini, succeeded in that crossover space.
The Dunedin singer/songwriter auditioned with her original song 60 Years about her grandparents' anniversary.
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Otago Daily Times
2 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Programme ‘quite a ride'
Versatile, Wellington-based conductor Brent Stewart has returned to Dunedin this week amid preparations for the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra's "Amalia Plays Piazzolla" matinee series concerts. The two concerts, to be held on Saturday from 5pm and Sunday from 3pm at King's & Queen's Performing Arts Centre, will showcase a programme ranging across more than two hundred years. Stewart, who last conducted the DSO during the "Synthony" concert in Christchurch last year, which fused electronic dance music and classical music together, is thoroughly enjoying working with the orchestra again. "We are preparing a fascinating programme for this weekend's concerts, from Nathaniel Otley's extraordinary new work to one of Mozart's greatest symphonies — it's going to be quite a ride," Stewart said. Opening the concert, Otley's piece — the rising tide: these former wetlands , inspired by the environmental changes in South Dunedin — required orchestra members to adopt a range of unusual techniques to bring the composer's vision to life. "We are bringing Nathaniel in to all of our rehearsals of the piece, to give support, feedback and answer the musicians' questions," Stewart said. "He has a lot of very specific requirements for sounds, including using quarter tones, specific timbres, tongue slaps, fingernails on the timpani, unusual bowing techniques and even incorporating sculptures. "It can be quite challenging, so we are doing a lot of workshopping in rehearsals, which has been fascinating." Otley himself would participate in the performance, controlling sample sounds alongside the orchestra. "This piece has been Nathaniel's main focus for this year, so we really want to honour his amazing work by giving it the best possible premiere performance." The orchestra will then be joined on stage by leading New Zealand violinist Amalia Hall for a performance of Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires , arranged by Ukrainian composer Leonid Desyatnikov. Written in 1970, the piece is described as a tango-infused answer to Vivaldi's famous Four Seasons, which includes "quotations" from the original work. "I am lucky enough to work with Amalia quite regularly in Wellington, and she is a prodigious talent. "It is impressive how quickly she can learn music by heart and her ear is amazing," Stewart said. There were moments throughout the piece where the orchestra section leads would play with Hall in a kind-of string quartet formation, and there were many high-spirited moments throughout. "It's one of those pieces where you can see the players really enjoying themselves — it's groovy, uplifting and very accessible. "I think we are in for a very special performance of this really fun and interesting work." During his last visit to Dunedin in 2023, Stewart conducted the DSO in a performance of Mozart's Symphony No. 41 , so it is fitting that on his return he will conduct another brilliant late-career masterpiece — Mozart's Symphony No. 39 . "Mozart's final three symphonies, which he wrote in a great flurry of activity, are considered among his greatest. "The Symphony No. 39 has a great sense of dance running through it, and will be a lovely way to round out the concert." As a freelance conductor, working on developing his career, Stewart is working with a range of musical organisations, including as musical director of Orpheus Choir in Wellington, NZ Secondary School Choir, Orchestra Wellington, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZ Opera, NZ Ballet and the DSO. He was recently named the NZ Opera Friedlander Foundation Associate Artist for 2025. "I am having a very busy year, which is great and gives me opportunities to continue building my relationships with musical organisations here and overseas," he said.
Otago Daily Times
3 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Deeply excited by his environs
More than 40 years ago American artist Les Joynes first visited New Zealand. That visit made such an impression he was determined to come back. Here on a Dunedin School of Art residency, he talks to Rebecca Fox about his love for museums and community. Les Joynes is about experiencing life as deeply as possible. The New York-based contemporary multimedia artist has lived in 12 countries across the world but the life of tourist is not for him. "So I don't like the idea of being an artist and a tourist, helicoptering in." Instead he wants to listen, learn and experience the cultures he finds himself in, a trait he got from his mother, who was an oral historian in Santa Barbara, California. "I remember what my mother said is people have stories. And it's up to us to really be present, to listen. When we were in a new space, we could just learn about it and integrate better by listening to other people's stories. And they really wanted to tell their stories." In Dunedin on a Dunedin School of Art (DSA) residency, Joynes is doing just that by attending lectures and visiting museums as well as doing research for possible future projects. Interested in boats since he learned to sail as a child growing up in Southern California, Joynes is fascinated by their ability to take people from one place to another. "They are a means of connection, of communication, of survival." New Zealand's waka fascinate him, in particular how they lashed joints together with natural materials. "I'm interested in how that becomes an extension of culture. So I'm taking lots of photographs." Photography is where it all started for Joynes. As a child he picked up a Agfa Silette 35mm film camera from a box of cameras in the back of the living room cupboard. His mother Dorothy was always taking photographs of family moments and life in general. "I wanted to be part of that picture-taking. I wanted to be on the other side of the camera." He went on to take darkroom photography in high school and then started working with a professional photographer. Taking photographs of the unexpected in the community became his next fixation. "Just the way architecture could be re-perceived through a camera, but also sometimes at Christmas time, people would decorate trucks, which I thought was pretty fascinating. And they would have a truck in their driveway, decorated with Christmas lights. And it just gave me a place to, in a way, memorialise things that were exciting for me." Nature also captured his imagination, especially sandstone rocks placed to prevent erosion from the sea and how they became "pockmarked like Swiss cheese" by the pounding surf. "That, for me, was really curious, because they changed over time, and they stopped becoming the blocks that they were. I loved photography. I was found every place with my camera." He went on to study art, mostly photography, getting a chance to study under German cinematographer Wolfgang Lauter, learning how to effectively use a camera and frame the world around him. Those early experiences stayed with him as his PhD was on form. "What is form? But then I realised it was a better question to ask, 'when is form?' So I looked at, in people's studios, they would create something, they would bring in a bunch of raw material and they would start doing stuff with that. And then they would be working on it, it would be like work in progress and then it would be finished at some point. And I was like, when is it finished? And I know when a piece of work is finished, but I wanted to play with the idea of when a piece of work continues to exist." That in turn led to Joynes' interest in performance art. In an exhibition in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he created a transparent studio within an exhibition space that people could see into and watch what he was creating in the middle of the space. Then they would bring the object out into the gallery space so people could see it. Next he would "recapture" the object, take it back inside the studio and redo it. "So there was an idea that it was never finished. There was a sense that it was playing with the idea of the museum pushing maybe some of the boundaries which were interesting to me." It was in his early 20s that Joynes made a conscious choice that he whatever he did, he wanted the ability to say where he would live and did not want to be there temporarily. "I wanted to learn about the people. And so I thought about the foreign service. I thought about all sorts of things that you think about. I love travelling and learning about new things. But the foreign service usually would have people on three-year rotations. And I said, well, that's not for me. I want to be able to build my life within the community. And so with that attitude, I continued my life and kind of curated it." So he moved to France before going to the United Kingdom, where he studied for his master's in fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London. It was during his foundation year he met New Zealander teacher and artist Stephen Furlonger and discovered sculpture. "He said, 'so what do you think?' And I said, 'I want to study here in this department and learn from you'. Because I had such a powerful feeling this is somebody I could learn from. And it was spot on. It was the best decision. And he, just by virtual example of being such a great sculptor, that also inspired me to come back many years later." In his master's study he branched out to be more conceptual with his work. Joynes created FormLAB, an idea that came out of a thought of how art studios are like laboratories, an experimental place where people create things. "I would work with things like plastic foam and found objects. I was quite skilled with my bicycle, bringing back things just from skips around London and going into the Isle of Dogs, which is now the Docklands financial district. And they gave me permission, and some people even gave me a hard hat." He looked at the debris as potential material for sculpture, not rubbish that was to be destroyed. He was also fascinated by the histories of the objects. "That, to me, was really powerful. On the ground were these vestiges of things, almost like Roman ruins. And some of the things were just too darn heavy. But they each had a powerful history." He applied for a scholarship to study at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Not expecting to get it, when he did he was faced with leaving London where life was going great to move to Tokyo where there was so much to learn. "It was the hard road. There's so many challenges." But he knew it would be the experience of a lifetime, one he would regret not taking up, so seven days after graduating from Goldsmiths he was in a dormitory room in Japan looking up at the ceiling wondering what he had done. "And it's those moments that really made me feel lucky." He returned to the UK to do his PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University and continued grabbing what opportunities came his way. The opportunity to travel to a conference in Korea came through a connection in London. At that conference he was invited to be a professor at a university in China. "We just developed this great friendship and I was learning about Chinese culture. Things happen when you're kind of on a certain frequency." Time in Mongolia came about after meeting Brazilian poet August de Campos, the founding father of concrete poetry in Brazil in the 1950s. "He said, 'come to my wife's birthday party. We'll have all of our friends there'. And there was this amazing welcome. And then I showed him my work and he said, 'you need to go to Mongolia'. I was like, 'what?' And he says, 'your work, I think you'd be really interested in their types of performance and singing'." While he was in Brazil he took a capoeira (a type of martial art combined with dance) class and unfortunately broke his foot in multiple places. This led to a revaluation of his residency as his movement was restricted. "During that time, I wrote the most polite letter to the US ambassador to Mongolia. And they responded. They said, 'when would you like to come?"' So over the next three summers Joynes travelled to Mongolia to work with different communities and build up relationships. Key experiences were meeting a shaman, seeing reindeer and being part of nature, which formed part of a performance he created. He has also spent significant time in Taiwan and served on the curatorial team that produced the 1998 Taipei Biennial at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. Having first visited New Zealand as an 18-year-old and enjoying the experience, Joynes has always wanted to return. So with a gap in his schedule he was researching residencies in the country when he came across the opportunity at the DSA for a six-week residency. "I was like 'I've never been to the South Island. I would like to see that'. So I had a real strong feeling I was in the right place." While here he will listen, learn and take photographs. These days he is an "iPhone guy", finding he does not like taking his camera as often as he used to. "Photography for me is kind of like capturing a memory. I'm just here to listen, to make these images and to develop an idea for a future exhibition." As he investigates the relationship between land and sky, the architecture of the city has also been attracting his attention as a photographer. "I have also discovered how beautiful the winter light illuminates the buildings, revealing an aspect of Dunedin's unique architecture. I come from Santa Barbara California and the relationship between the earth, nature, the sea and the sky has always been close to me as an artist. "As an artist I'm very interested in fragments and how a fragment of a building can tell a story." It is also another opportunity for him to experience another tertiary art school system, something he takes a strong interest in given many nations are struggling to fund art education. "So I'm really fortunate to see how a school like Dunedin School of Art creates this unique purpose. When you have something like that, it's monumental for a country." Top of his list of places to visit when in a new place are always museums and he says Dunedin's are "outstanding". So the first thing he did on arrival in Dunedin was visit Toitū Otago Settlers Museum and Tūhura Otago Museum where he particularly enjoyed the video Toitū te Whenua , which tells the stories of Māori place names in the South made by Allied Productions in collaboration with the Otago Daily Times . He was also impressed by the waka at the Hocken Collections and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's "Kua marara hoki ngā mana o tōna kaha ki runga i te katoa" HK Taiaroa exhibition. "It has given me unique perspectives on the depth of Māori culture." Joynes likes to walk wherever he is as he believes it gives him the ability to see "a lot of things in a really rich way". "There is so much to do in Dunedin. There's a rhythm to the way we can experience the world. I'm into experiencing life just as, not as slowly as possible, but as deeply as possible." Comment: One of the most memorable projects Les Joynes created was a collaboration with Chinese artists in mainland China "where we created performances on a wild section of the Great Wall of China, where we improvised a series of performances".
Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Otago Daily Times
Band set to make noise in China
Members of Dunedin band Dale Kerrigan (from left) Josh Nicholls, Joel Field, Connor Blackie and Shlee Nicholls will embark on an 11-show tour across China next month. Photo: supplied Getting their lyrics vetted by the Chinese government was among the hurdles a Dunedin band faced in taking their music to the global stage. Noise rock four-piece Dale Kerrigan announced last week they would be embarking on an 11-show tour across China in September and October — including in Shanghai, Chongqing and two shows in Chengdu. Guitarist Joel Field said he had never been to China before, and still did not know what he was in for. "My small New Zealand brain cannot comprehend how big and complicated these cities are going to be." The tour had been about a year in the making. An overseas promoter contacted the band after watching them perform at last year's Camp A Low Hum music festival. Planning the tour had involved "far more organisation than Dale Kerrigan can handle, to be honest", he said. "At the time, I didn't even have a passport, so we got on to that super quick. "We had to apply for permits, so we sent in all of our lyrics to get them approved by the Chinese Communist Party and make sure they were all good, and they were." They also sent in videos of them performing all their songs before they could apply for visas, but discovered two members of the band were not actually permanent New Zealand citizens. "So the whole process to get all of our proper documentation together has been quite a nightmare, but it's going well now." The tour marked the international debut of the Dunedin band. Formed in 2020, Field said their music was influenced by 1990s acts such as Sonic Youth, as well as contemporary New Zealand bands such as Ringlets. Their third record HEAVY GREASY was released last month exclusively on Bandcamp. Every band fantasised about going on an international tour, the expectation in New Zealand being this would happen in Australia first, he said. Their music was "very hectic", "extremely loud" and "in your face". "I know there's heaps of people in China, so surely some of them like it." He hoped to "turn some people right off" but that other audience members would be "real keen" on their music. "I reckon there's going to be some people standing in the back, still very confused at what we're doing, but I think there'll be some people up front running around and headbanging."
