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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