The NZ Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2025 programme. Photo / Robin Clewley
The NZ Symphony Orchestra has announced its 2025 programme. Photo / Robin Clewley
One of the world’s top mezzo sopranos, a legendary Japanese conductor, a young British saxophone star and a man who made a joke of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in his comedy days are on the guest list for the NZSO’S 2025 season.
The last in that list is BretMcKenzie, who, as part of Flight of the Conchords, toured the world with an additional cello player, Nigel Collins, whom the duo would introduce as “the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra”.
McKenzie will be narrating Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns, which is part of the orchestra’s family-friendly Creepy-Crawly Carnival in August. It also features Roussel’s The Spider’s Feast: Symphonic Fragments with a big-screen video of native creepy-crawlies.
The NZSO’s 2025 guest list includes, from left, Joyce DiDonato, Bret McKenzie and Jess Gillam. Photo / Supplied
Opera star American Grammy winner Joyce DiDonato makes her NZ debut in November singing Berlioz’s song cycle Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights) in Wellington and Auckland.
Also appearing late in the year is Jess Gillam, who at age 26, has already been awarded an MBE for services to music, and recorded albums featuring everything from classical composers to songs by Björk, David Bowie and Kate Bush. She’ll be playing Glazunov’s romantic Saxophone Concerto and joining the orchestra for Rachmaninov’s epic Symphonic Dances.
Japanese maestro and Bach buff Masaaki Suzuki is among the line-up of top international conductors heading to the NZSO podium in 2025. Other international stars include pianists Daniil Trifonov and Javier Perianes, Finnish violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto, Austrian cellist Kian Soltani and Welsh flautist Emily Beynon,
New Zealand works to feature in 2025 include Salina Fisher and Jerome Kavanagh’s Papatūānuku and the October world premiere of Victoria Kelly’s Stabat Mater. The work is a response to Rossini’s famous Stabat Mater, which will also be performed in the concert.
