03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Organisers pull out stops for record numbers
Ngarangi Sadlier, of Lower Hutt, auditions for the Singer/Songwriter category of the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards in Gore on Friday. She eventually won the Gospel category. PHOTO: ELLA SCOTT-FLEMING
As record number of contestants converged on Gore for the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards, organisers put systems in place to handle the churn of more than 800 musical entries.
The auditioning process for the awards began across five venues on Friday 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.
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 came together at the club for the finals on Saturday and Sunday nights.
