Midday Report Essentials for Tuesday 24 June 2025
In today's episode, the US President has declared a complete and total ceasefire between Iran and Israel, flights from Auckland to Doha are set to resume on Tuesday afternoon after Monday's flight was diverted to nearby Oman in the wake of Iranian strikes on a US airbase, General Practice networks say any money for the severely underfunded sector is welcome, but it doesn't fix the decades of underinvestment, and the finalists for the Pacific Music Awards have been revealed, with artists Shane Walker and Aaradhna leading the pack.
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2 hours ago
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Getting more Pasifika women into comedy: Fast Favourites with Rhiannon McCall
Pasifika people make up almost 17% of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland's population, but Pasifika women in particular are considered underrepresented when it comes to the professional comedy scene. It's something Cook Islands-New Zealand comedian Rhiannon McCall with Samoan New Zealand producer Sarah Richards are looking to help change with a new free programme in South Auckland for women later this month. Va'ine Fresh will cover the basics of stand up, improv and stagecraft, culminating in a "low stakes showcase" at Māngere Arts Centre at the end of September. A 2024 Billy T Award Nominee, Rhiannon McCall is a familiar face from television. Everything from Seven Sharp and Shortland Street to recently My Dream Green Home , Don't and Guy Montgomery's Spelling Bee . This year for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival she brought an entire town to life in a completely improvised western The Good the Bad, and the Completely Made Up! Rhiannon McCall joins us in the Auckland studio to play Fast Favourites.


Scoop
7 hours ago
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Brandon De La Cruz Announces New Album – Blue Irises In Hologram
Speech – Good Luck Mansion 8 August 2025 'New Signs' and 'How Many Names For Yellow?' are the first singles from Kirikiriroa-based folk musician Brandon De La Cruz's forthcoming album Blue Irises in Hologram, which will be released on 17 October 2025. Initial recording for 'New Signs' took place at the artist's shared studio at Never Project Space in Kirikiriroa from May-September 2022. The track's arrangement evolved through experimentation with samples taken from Mississippi Records releases, a label De La Cruz worked for while previously living in Portland, Oregon. Jim Fulton (Sylvia's Toaster) plays bass on the song. 'New Signs' was written eight years ago as an experiment while the artist took part in Matt Meighan's Songwriting as Truth-Telling workshop in Portland, OR. Describing his approach, De La Cruz said, 'While I write I'm usually hyper-focused on fitting words to a story or feeling. With 'New Signs' I bypassed that inclination and reached out for sounds that felt right.' 'How Many Names For Yellow?' was recorded at a borrowed house overlooking the Waikato River in Kirikiriroa from May–June 2024. Contributors to the track's instrumentation and arrangement include Jim Fulton (Sylvia's Toaster), Brooke Singer (French for Rabbits), Nick Walsh (Big Sigh) and Rachel Hope Peary (Big Sigh). For this song, De La Cruz took inspiration from one of Van Gogh's letters, which includes the line 'It is impossible to say how many different green-greys there are for example – the variations are infinite.' 'New Signs' and 'How Many Names For Yellow?' were mixed by De Stevens and Brandon De La Cruz in Aotearoa and mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk in Portland, Oregon. Brandon De La Cruz is a folk artist whose lyricism is uniquely shaped by his interest in mythology, ceremony and RH Blyth's translations of Japanese haiku. He grew up in the suburbs of Southern California's Inland Empire and has lived and performed regularly in Portland, OR, Berkeley, CA and Aotearoa. De La Cruz's work has been featured on RNZ's Bookmarks, as well as Flying Out's Live Sessions. He has supported such renowned performers as Simon Joyner and Tom Brosseau. Prior records were inspired by the works of Rilke, Joan Didion and Ovid, while his most recent LP, Two Kilos of Blue, drew from local and personal images, and was showcased through performances at Camp A Low Hum, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki and Futuna Chapel in Wellington. In 2025, De La Cruz was offered a fellowship by the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he'll spend the next two years preparing his first manuscript of poetry for publication. Tracklist: War Machine New Signs The Wildcat I Can't Calm Keeps Me From My Home Memory, No Friend To Me What A Friend We Have In Jesus Every Little Boy In Auckland How Many Names For Yellow? Blue Irises


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2 days ago
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Drawing From Memory: Auckland-Based Tongan Artist Brings Pacific Nostalgia To Life
Coco Lance, RNZ Pacific digital journalist Auckland-based artist and animator Luca Tu'avao Walton is an emerging voice in the Pacific creative landscape, with a distinctive style rooted in memory, identity, and the 'nostalgia' of island life. In fact, his work resonated so strongly that one woman messaged him directly, saying his portrayal of Pacific women inspired her to cancel a plastic surgery appointment she had made to change her "wide-set nose". Now, Walton's work is making its way to the big screen as part of an upcoming, yet anonymous New Zealand-Pacific feature film. From Tonga to Aotearoa Born in Lautoka in Fiji to a Tongan mother and a palagi father, Walton spent his early years in Mata'ika, a lagoon-side village in Tonga where his imagination bloomed. "We used to live right on a lagoon, which was just the best upbringing, among my cousins and family, swimming and kayaking all the time." It was there that Walton began to dream up the wondrous worlds that now define his art. "I would sit lagoon-side and just imagine all the mermaids that lived there, so I would draw mermaids a lot growing up. "My drawings bring to life a lot of what I imagined as a kid, growing up in Tonga, and a lot of my work is born from this idea of, what did I want to see as a kid? Then filling that gap." At age 10, Walton moved to Aotearoa for school. "Moving there was definitely a switch-up in my pace of life," he said. "I went from island life, which is slow and thoughtful, to being in the city and taking 40-minute buses each way to school." Despite the change in pace and lifestyle, Walton stuck with what he had always been good at - creating. His trajectory began early, nurtured by a supportive whānau. "My family likes to pretend I sprung up out of nowhere, because I draw and illustrate. But all my Tongan family are creative, they're singers, dancers. They make traditional toi (art). I'm the black sheep in that I am the only working creative, but they've all nurtured and rooted for me." Walton's memory is central to the creative process. Drawing on nostalgia, he said, is central to the Pacific island experience. "A lot of my work is about memory…belonging, nostalgia, feminism, recontextualising the past and imagining a new future. When I go into making a piece, I trawl through my memories. I don't try to be relatable, and yet I think when I tap into my realities, our people engage in that art." Family, especially the wāhine in his life, have inspired much of Walton's style. "My mum never put any expectation to be anything other than an I'm just drawing what I know at the end of the day. I think that's what a lot of artists do. "If I were to draw cool race cars, it would be a falsehood, because I was raised with my mum in front of the mirror, doing her makeup, her bangles clunking together, her GHD straightener sizzling her hair." "I was raised in a very feminine environment, I'm a feminine person myself, so my art is an expression of that femininity for me, which happens to be through a Pacific lens." Walton wasn't prepared for the response to his work, but it has been motivating nonethless. "It's always beautiful when you have kids, aunties, other creatives coming and saying, your work reminds me of home, makes me think of my Nana, or 'this looks like my mum back in the day. "Our people are such yearners, such sentimental people, and we're all family orientated. I feel there is a real hunger for work that feels familiar and is made with alofa and 'ofa. People can tell when it's made from within the culture, not just about it. People are craving more than just tokenism as well; we want the depth, the humour, the mamae, a bit of the sadness that comes with, you know, balancing our identities." Now, Walton's vision has led to his involvement in an upcoming film. The project is being spearheaded by Sāmoan-Māori creative Jessica "Coco" Hansell in collaboration with local animation Studio Ki'i'Pili (a Pacific take on Studio Ghibli), and is based out of Ōnehunga's creative hub, Wheke Fortress. Although it is still in its final stages and many details are yet to be revealed, Walton said it involves a collective of talented Pacific creatives, with the kaupapa being a Pacific-centric animated short film. "It has been a dream kaupapa, not just in what we are making, but how we are making it. It's an active experiment in the decolonisation process, working at a pace that honours the people involved. "I've been able to fully lean into my strengths without leaving anyone behind, a communal way of creating," Walton said. Looking forward, Walton emphasised animation as an accessible and important tool for equity in storytelling. "The government's putting big funding into animation right now. Pacific people need to take a big slice. "Individualism isn't natural to our people…being able to make myself useful to something bigger…turned my practice into a life path."