When Silencio Ensemble asked me to write this piece, it was suggested that I write something inspired by or relevant to Canterbury – one possibility being a piece inspired by the landscape. In a funny kind of way, Mad Cow-Farmer’s Disease is inspired by the landscape – going to a Canterbury river and seeing the signs that say “Do Not Swim” or another where cows are loose in the riverbed and cow shit is all over the place. 

It is inspired by dry riverbeds surrounded by farms with pumps constantly irrigating the land – the premise being that any ounce of water that makes it to the sea is wasted. These same farmers, self-titled “environmentalists,” use hypothetical science to justify their wanton destruction of the natural environment.

Recording is of a live performance by the Silencio Ensemble, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Mad Cow Farmer's Disease

90% of New Zealand's lowland rivers and almost 50% of its lakes are polluted. River Lavalle is a chamber opera presented as a 1940s style radio play detective story with an underlying environmental theme written by Fiona Farrell and Chris Adams.

Who has abducted River Lavalle? Was it the political indifference in the figure of Joe Politico? Or careless, exploitative farming in the person of Billy Kaukowski? Or the reckless consumption of resources personified by Bubbles Van Dam? And does River still wait somewhere in the shadows, ready to return?

This is Bubbles Van Dam's aria "I wanna be."

I Wanna Be from River Lavalle

The first poem of the Waste Land by T.S. Eliot with accompanying music. 

The Burial Of The Dead From The Waste Land

Maud is a four movement string quartet written for the Jade String Quartet in 2015. This recording is of a live performance by the Jade String Quartet in 2017, recorded at the Pah Homestead in Hillsborough, Auckland.

COME into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash’d in the hall;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood,
Our wood, that is dearer than all;

From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.

Extracts from Maud by Alfred Tennyson

Concert 2 at the Pah

II. Edgy with Energy and Passion [from Maud]

I. [from Maud]

Echoed Memories was written while I was Composer in Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia as part of a collaborative project with the Auckland War Memorial Museum. I was asked to write a work, inspired by one of the spaces in the Museum. I chose the World War I Sanctuary.

The World War I Sanctuary is a public space, but also a very personal one for the many people who have relatives names inscribed on the walls. The dignity of the space, the sense of light which streams through the skylight and windows, contrasting with the sombre nature of the lists of names that surround you.

In Echoed Memories I draw on several musical pieces that would have been significant to the soldiers; The Last Post, the popular tune It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, and I Runga o Nga Puke, written by Paraire Tomoana and used to farewell the Second Maori Contingent in 1915.

At the same time I was conscious of the fact that my own life has been much distanced from the experience of war. I wanted to write something that did not try to diminish or trivialise the experience of those who have gone through the pain of war. I wanted to create a piece that, drawing on aural fragments of our collective past, might allow us to reflect and contemplate what the World War I Sanctuary actually means.

Sonic Museum

Echoed Memories

A short piece for four clarinets inspired by renaissance music.

Arianna's Dance

Madrigal, a work for clarinet and piano, takes the Dowland song "Can She Excuse My Wrongs" as its starting point for a set of variations. This recording is a live performance by Anna McGregor and Bus Bryant-Greene.

Madrigal

Antonyms of Trust is a setting of a poem by Canterbury author and artist Sam Mahon for actor and orchestra.

Antonyms of Trust

Arianna Suite is a single movement work consisting of a number of different sections, written for four violins. The work draws on aspects of renaissance music.

Arianna Suite

A setting of five poems by D.H. Lawrence by Chris Adams (1998)

I. The Gazelle Calf 
II. Little Fish 
III. Self-pity 
IV. The New Moon 
V. Spray

Helen Acheson, Mezzo-Soprano and Chris Adams, Piano

A Song Cycle

Chris Adams (1979-) is a New Zealand composer and is the Head of Music at The Christchurch Rudolf Steiner School in Christchurch. He was the Mozart Fellow (2010-2011) at the University of Otago and the Auckland Philharmonia’s Composer in Residence (2009). Chris was the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Pah Homestead from July to September, 2010, a position he held again for a further three months in 2011.

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