4 May 2019

Sound Lounge: John Rimmer at 80

From Sound Lounge, 9:30 pm on 4 May 2019

New Zealand composer, performer, and teacher John Rimmer turned 80 this year. So to celebrate The Karlheinz Company are holding a concert featuring a range of John's chamber and electronic works.

John Rimmer composing electronic music, mid 1970s

John Rimmer composing electronic music, mid 1970s Photo: John Buckland, courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library

The concert will also include short tribute pieces from Rimmer's former students which the guest of honour will listen to from the audience. RNZ Concert is recording this performance on 26 May 2019. Tickets are free, but to secure a place you’ll need to register via Eventbrite.

Here are three works by John Rimmer - and with such a long and varied composition career there were a lot to choose from!

Vulcan

Vulcan was commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and was completed on 5 February 1999, the composer's sixtieth birthday.

New Zealand lies on one of the most volatile regions of the Earth, the so called 'Pacific Ring of Fire'. This fanfare reminds us of the way in which the cultures of the Pacific have been shaped by powerful and often destructive natural forces. Aucklanders in particular see volcanic hills every day and should know that more will appear as they have in the past albeit at several thousand year intervals. The music of Vulcan is thus explosive in nature. However the musical material goes beyond its volcanic inspiration and enters a sound world of drama and fantasy.

Iridescent Shells

Iridescent Shells for piano trio began life as a short solo piano piece that John composed for Douglas Lilburn’s 80th birthday. The original piano piece (Flashes of Iridescence) is based on a fragment of Lilburn’s Sonatina 2 for which Lilburn drew inspiration from the interior colours of the New Zealand paua shell. In a letter to a pianist friend Lilburn described these colours as ‘flashes of iridescence’.

No caption

Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles

John Rimmer took his Flashes of Iridescence, recomposed it for piano trio and called it Iridescent Shells. Here it is performed by Martin Riseley (violin), Inbal Megiddo (cello) and Jian Liu (piano).

Transcend

John's concerto for orchestra, Transcend, celebrates the extraordinary technical and musical ability of the individual members of the orchestra, but also refers to the nature of human artistic and spiritual experience.

John believes that music is a powerful art form that has the ability to lift us out of the mundane into a rich artistic and spiritual realm. He says, “Art and spirituality become transcendent when they take us beyond our normal experience.”

Listen to Transcend performed by the NZSO, conducted by Hamish McKeich.

This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.