Counting her lucky stars

By MIKE HOULAHAN

The catchphrase of composers is "That's not what we got into this for," says Auckland composer Eve de Castro Robinson.

Fame and riches are just two of the things de Castro Robinson's life in music has not afforded her. However, she has been able to sustain a career as a working composer - something few of her peers in this country can claim.

Now the New Zealand International Arts Festival has given de Castro Robinson the honour of a special concert highlighting her compositions. "Five pieces, 90 minutes, no interval, quite tight, but a lovely privilege to have a solo concert offered and organised for one," de Castro Robinson says.

The festival performance features de Castro Robinson's chamber compositions. However, throughout her career she has been in demand from a variety of ensembles - from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Auckland Philharmonia, to London's Nash Ensemble and the New Zealand String Quartet.

"I only write to commission now, so I'm always working for a performance," de Castro Robinson says. "I've been lucky that everything I've written, apart from a couple of early works, has been played."

She acknowledges that isn't the case for every composer, and says she forcefully tells that to the students she teaches in her day job, as lecturer in composition at the University of Auckland.

"I tend to get them at the beginning of stage two, and I give them a bit of a devil's advocate speech: 'What do you want to be a composer for? It's far too difficult, there are no jobs, you're not going to make a living out of it, there's no money in it. I suggest you go into commercial music or film music - that may be more lucrative'," she says.

"You have to be as brilliant as someone like Lyell Cresswell, who has survived on commissions. There aren't many people like him. Anthony Ritchie has done well, but in the main most of us in New Zealand have to teach or lecture or take private students or something."

Academia has allowed de Castro Robinson to survive as a composer and with a new performance-based funding regime her employer encourages her to write new music. The festival's portrait concert will allow audiences a sneak preview of de Castro Robinson's next big project, an opera based on the life of kinetic sculptor and experimental film-maker Len Lye.

Along with librettist and Lye biographer Roger Horrocks, de Castro Robinson has taken some of Lye's poems and matched them to the vocal talents of mezzo soprano Helen Medlyn.

"Most people know the big kinetic sculptures, some know the films, but not many would have read the poetry, and there's some lovely stuff which is eminently useable," de Castro Robinson says.

"I've done a bit of vocal music but it has been based on birdsong - the Chaos and Delight series - and this more operatic style is quite new for me. I don't want it in the traditional contemporary operatic style though, because that's not Len Lye - he was much too eccentric to do that, so I've got a mixture of styles."

The festival concert features one other premiere: Ring True, a piece for solo piano which will be played by Dan Poynton. "That's a 10-minute, contemplative, meditative piece that I'm rather pleased with. I'm looking forward to hearing that."

A "semi-premiere" is a new arrangement of Tumbling Strains. The work was originally commissioned by Doug Beilman (violin) and James Tennant (cello), but de Castro Robinson has rescored the work for string quartet. It will be played by the New Zealand String Quartet, of which Beilman is a member.

The concert will be rounded out by two works from the 1980s - a piece for solo clarinet, and a work commissioned by the Nash Ensemble. It has been said the only thing harder for a New Zealand composer than to get a piece performed is to have it performed a second time, so de Castro Robinson is delighted to have two older works gain an outing.

- NZPA

Performance

* Who: Eve de Castro Robinson: Portrait

* Where and when: Ilott Theatre, Wellington, March 5, in NZ International Arts Festival