A short composition for piano I did for uni about the wild Greek god Pan running :)
Also unfortunately, this is just the sibelius audio so it's not amazing


Τρέχει ο Πᾶν "Running Pan"

It's a pretty shaky performance, but I wrote this for Onslow College's Chamber Choir in 2012 :)
It's in Old Icelandic, and it's about a Norse sorceress, a völva, talking to Odin about how she knows the secret of how he gained his knowledge of all things by sacrificing his eye to drink from the waters of the well of the jötunn/giant, Mímir.

Mímisbrunnr

'Primeval Light' for large orchestra.
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Premièred and recorded by Te Tira Pūoro o Aotearoa | the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Awarded the Overall Prize in the NZSO Todd Corporation Young Composer Awards.

Te Tira Pūoro o Aotearoa | the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Hamish McKeich

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PROGRAMME NOTE:

'Primeval Light' germinated as a contemplation on Mahler's Urlicht.

With this Romantic source material expressing a hope for release from human suffering, the title's translation became symbolic of a pristine, primeval natural world - particularly bearing in mind the primal forests that once covered most of Europe and certainly, vast swathes of each continent.

Given the impersonal reality of a world changing before our eyes from a state of relative ecological, climactic balance to one that is becoming dangerously erratic, and charged with heat, the work became a contemplation on large-scale ecological flux, and the increasing likelihood of natural and human disaster.

These concerns are reflected in the structure of the work as a whole, where echoes of Mahler's material, initially characterised by a gentle, organic lyricism, later resurfaces in a series of accumulative, incresingly unstable waves. These grow to a breaking point of instability. From this point, the material begins a process of disintegration, with overlapping, almost mecahnical structures of rhythm and pitch grinding themselves apart as the work dissolves into a catatonic, heat-soaked stasis.

Primeval Light - for orchestra

Rehearsal extract from 'Lanternfish' - a chamber opera developed in collaboration with librettist David Bottomley, and supported by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Quicksilver - a lanternfish - sung by Yolisa Ngwexana

Repetiteur: Alistair Burton
Conductor: Dominic Wheeler

Lanternfish - a chamber opera: rehearsal Extract (Scene V)

Developed in collaboration with Ariana Tikao

'puāwai' for taonga pūoro and viola is an exploration of the meaning and symbolism nested within this kupu (word)

While the tactile, physical body of the viola is used to explore the sense of a seed or flower physically pushing itself open into the light of the new world, the voice of the pūmotomoto invokes the word's symbolic connections with childbirth and the sense of the human body opening like a flower.

The work ripples with a sense of bright delicacy. Invoking a sense of subdued energy, light streaming through the canopy, or as a presage of the light of new life, the viola's flickering harmonics echo the flickering rhythmic patterns of the poiāwhiowhio, while the soulful voice of the pūmotomoto, and ultimately the kōauau ponga ihu meld seamlessly with the soulful lyricism of the viola.

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Commissioned by Sophia Acheson, and premièred by Ariana Tikao and Sophia Acheson at the International Viola Congress in Campinas, Brazil (July 2024)

puāwai - for taonga pūoro and viola

Here's a piece I wrote for chamber ensemble in response to reading about the incredible changes in the usually bone-dry Atacama desert brought about by El Niño (2017-18)

Luka Venter

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