Musician will be part of five Hamilton festival events

In a Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival first, one performer is involved in five separate events, four of which he is producing.

This is a challenge that Dr Jeremy Mayall is relishing.

Dr Mayall is a composer, researcher and lecturer at the School of Media Arts, Wintec. He works in music, sound art, installation and multimedia formats, with a focus on exploring his fascination with the interrelationships between sound, time, space, the senses, and human experience.

Dr Mayall's five events are Sonic Cocktails, On the Threshold of the Sun, Sonoscopia, Shepherd and the Sunset Symphony.

The festival opens on Wednesday February 7 with his brainchild, Sonic Cocktails, a collaboration with Alexander Williams of Hamilton's cocktail bar, Wonderhorse.

The audience becomes part of the artwork as they taste five different cocktails that have been expertly matched to the music.

Only limited seats remain. This is an R18 event and will be staged in the Pacific Crystal Palace Spiegeltent.

Threshold of the Sun is a multimedia journey that takes place in four separate unique, but interconnected events during sunrise and sunset on February 10 and 17.

Dr Mesmer's Private Army is made up of five multimedia performers lead by Dr Mayall.

Horomona Horo, a taonga puoro expert who studied under Hirini Melbourne, will add to the uniquely New Zealand aspect of this performance.

Admission is free, and each of the four performances will be staged in four different gardens — from the new Concept Garden, the amphitheatre of the Medici Court, around the Californian pool in the American Modernist Garden and the Tudor Garden which sits inside Elizabethan style walls.

Dr Mayall's third work is Sonoscopia, and it will also be staged in the spiegeltent.

He will be joined by local artist Paul Bradley and Orchestras Central where the audience will be immersed in a performance that combines music and live projections of visual art.

During 2017, Dr Mayall composed a score for Shepherd, a Waikato-produced feature film directed by Julia Reynolds.

At the festival screening in the Chinoiserie Garden, he will conduct a live string quartet that will accompany the film.

The festival also closes with Dr Mayall on Sunday February 18 as he takes on the role of MC for the Sunset Symphony on the Rhododendron Lawn.

With five events, seven venues and eight performances over 12 days, the organisers say they are thrilled to have a world-class performer who has committed to such an phenomenal level of involvement in the 2018 Festival.

Further information at hgaf.co.nz