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The Star: June 15, 2017

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24<br />

Latest Christchurch news at www. .kiwi<br />

Thursday <strong>June</strong> <strong>15</strong> <strong>2017</strong><br />

Our People<br />

<strong>The</strong> <strong>Star</strong><br />

Philip Norman<br />

Composer scores grant to keep<br />

Dr Philip Norman has been granted a $100,000 Michael King<br />

Fellowship to pursue a lifetime project about New Zealand<br />

composers. He spoke with Gabrielle Stuart about burning<br />

bras, brutal reviews and making money out of music<br />

How how did you get the news<br />

of this grant?<br />

I got the call about a fortnight<br />

ago. It was a lovely surprise.<br />

Who wouldn’t like to be offered<br />

$100,000 to pursue one of their<br />

projects? This is something I’ve<br />

been working on for a while, but<br />

the fellowship means I can concentrate<br />

on it, turn down other<br />

work, and get it done.<br />

How long have you been<br />

working on this?<br />

I would dread to think. I<br />

started this project in 1978 when<br />

I began studying for my PHD<br />

at the University of Canterbury,<br />

before I realised it was too big a<br />

project to do in that time. So I<br />

put in a year on it then, and add<br />

to that another 10,000 hours<br />

every few years since.<br />

You’ve already written a bibliography<br />

with stories of about<br />

120 New Zealand composers. I<br />

have to confess, I didn’t know<br />

we had so many composers<br />

here.<br />

You can actually add one or<br />

two to that – there are about<br />

1200 people out there composing.<br />

If I listed all of them that<br />

would be the whole word count<br />

of the book right there, but it<br />

would look like a phonebook.<br />

So this will focus just on people<br />

who have had a real impact with<br />

their work.<br />

It’s funny really, today we’ve<br />

got many, many people composing<br />

because computer technology<br />

makes so much possible.<br />

But go back 100 years, and there<br />

were thousands of people composing<br />

then. It was something<br />

you had a go at, because of<br />

course there was no radio or<br />

music recordings, so for many<br />

people that was their source of<br />

entertainment. Many people<br />

were something else by day<br />

and composer by night.<br />

Is being based here at<br />

the bottom of the world,<br />

an advantage or disadvantage<br />

to composers?<br />

I found it to be a huge<br />

disadvantage, principally<br />

because the world’s cultural<br />

traffic flows southward. It comes<br />

from London and New York<br />

and trickles down until it finally<br />

one day arrives in Invercargill.<br />

It makes it hard for New<br />

Zealand composers to<br />

swim against that tide,<br />

because you don’t<br />

have that huge<br />

promotional<br />

machinery behind you that they<br />

do in those cities. Having said<br />

that, I wouldn’t wish to live in<br />

London or New York. <strong>The</strong> advantages<br />

of being here outweigh<br />

the difficulties.<br />

Your pieces have been performed<br />

in some amazing theatres<br />

and venues across the world<br />

– what are some that have stood<br />

out?<br />

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