Kane Parsons Photo: Ian Rotherham
Kane Parsons can remember the exact moment he succombed to the classical music bug.
He was at Freyberg High School in Palmerston North and his music theory teacher, Wendy Hunt, played Chopin's Prelude in E Minor to the class.
"It was the first time hearing a piece and thinking, what the heck was that? The melody is so simple, yet so poignant."
From that day, Parsons was hooked.
Not that he turned his back on other music. As a educator, musician and composer, Parsons writes for bands and choirs, often in Samoan and Te Reo Maori as well as English.
Kane Parsons Photo: Rob Edwards
Which is perhaps one of the reasons he's won this year's SOUNZ commission to write a large-scale work for a community performance.
"Ka Tū, Ka Ora – Stand Strong, Live Well" will feature a high school, primary school and even a creche choir, as well as a Kapa Haka group and a Pasifika Choir, singing in English, Te Reo Maori and Gagana Samoa.
And all the performers will come from the community of Parson's beloved Te Papaioea, Palmerston North.
It's not the first time the Manawatū city has been the venue for a major community music performance. Jenny McLeod wrote her massive choral work "Under the Sun" for Palmerston North's 100th birthday in 1971.
Jenny McLeod, paving the way in Palmy... Photo: Gareth Watkins (Gwcreative - Own work, CC BY-SA 4)
Parson wasn't around when that was staged, but many of his musical mentors were part of it.
McLeod's work told the story of the story of the cosmos and the humans in it, from the beginning of time, to planet Earth's end.
Parson's work will focus more on the here and now, especially the mental health of Palmerston North's children and teenagers.
He has until May next year to complete the project, by which time the cast of community performers may be well into the hundreds. All down, in part, to a bit of Chopin a teacher played in a high school class several decades ago.
