Category: CDs

April’s new music for Te Awe

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via GIPHY

Statler: Well, it was good.
Waldorf: Ah, it was very bad.
Statler: Well, it was average.
Waldorf: Ah, it was in the middle there.
Statler: Ah, it wasn’t that great.
Waldorf: I kind of liked it.”
-‘The Muppet Show’.

I’m Mark, the Music & Film Specialist at Wellington City Libraries. I buy music for the CD & Vinyl collections, and also run the Libraries’ Wellington Music Facebook page). My Music Specialist colleague Sam, and Fiction Specialist (and avid music fan) Neil, join me every month to cast an eye over the new material we have been buying for the music collection at our CBD Te Awe library. We pick out some interesting titles across a range of music genres, and try to limit our reviews to a few lines only. Can we encapsulate an entire album in just a couple of lines? [Ed. This is probably unlikely at this point]. Do we actually know anything about new music? Or, are we just too old to understand what most of this is banging on about? [Ed. This is more than likely]. Read on to find out…

Jon Savage’s ambient 90s : 1991-1996
Neil Says: Jon Savage’s ambient 90’s is a sonic snapshot that evokes a particular time and moment in ambient music’s development. The nineties were a transitory phase in music, driven by new digital technology in the form of digital synths and samplers, and the arrival of new illegal recreational drugs. This potent combination spawned the rave and dance scene. As such, ambient music of the time is more connected to these scenes and is much more rhythmic, loopy and early sample driven, than the dreamy spacey analogue ambient works of the 70s or eighties. This excellent compilation does a fine job in capturing this scene…. Rave on, chill out.

Continue reading “April’s new music for Te Awe” →

From Finland and the Fairground: New Classical CDs

CorrinaLeave a comment

With the arrival of autumn the nights grow longer, providing an ideal opportunity to listen to more music.  This blog explores a selection of the new classical CDs we added to our collection in April, each offering rarities and innovation. Two of these recordings feature artists and composers well-known in Wellington: Amalia Hall, concertmaster of Orchestra Wellington, and Christopher Park have recorded works for violin and piano by Philipp Schwarenka, while the New Zealand String Quartet, an ensemble-in-residence at Victoria University of Wellington, offers a second installment of notes from a journey featuring new works by New Zealand composers.  A new recording of an Offenbach opéra-bouffe will transport you to nineteenth-century Paris, while the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra navigates Sibelius’s ‘psychological’ symphony, and Le Consort reveals that there is always more to Vivaldi than we expect. Read, listen, and enjoy!

Haydn All-Stars / Trio Ernest
Trio Ernest (violinist Stanislas Gosset, pianist Natasha Roque Alsina, and cellist Clément Dami) formed in 2019, and for the last five years they have been busy touring and performing, immediately attracting attention for their imaginative programming. Haydn All-Stars is a recording project built around four piano trios by Joseph Haydn— the composer who transformed the piano trio from its early existence as a piano work with violin and cello accompaniment or obligato into a more complex form, establishing a meaningful voice for each instrument so that the piano trio might become a sublime form of musical discourse. Trio Ernest interleaves between the Haydn trios several pieces that offer homage or allusion to Haydn’s music. Brahms’s song ‘Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer’ and Ravel’s Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, both arranged for piano trio by Carlos Roque Alsina, and Jaqueline Fontyn’s Lieber Joseph! each respond to Haydn’s music in enigmatic ways. Trio Ernest offers precise and expressive performances of each work, demonstrating the individual prowess and thoughtful ensemble that have earned the Trio prize and accolades over the last five years.

notes from a journey II : te haerenga / New Zealand String Quartet
In 2011 the New Zealand String Quartet released Notes from a Journey, comprising five works by New Zealand composers  written between 2015 and 2021. Last year a second volume followed, notes from a journey ii: te haerenga. Some of these pieces — Tabea Squire’s I Danced, Unseen, Ross Harris’s String Quartet No. 9, and Gillian Whitehead’s Poroporoaki — formed part of the NZSQ’s 2023 ‘Woven Pathways’ national tour, while the pieces by Gareth Farr, Salina Fisher, and Louise Webster are favourites from earlier performances. The works recorded here have emerged from a variety of sources: I Danced, Unseen began its life as a collaboration between the NZSQ, Dance Collective Aotearoa, and choreographer Loughlan Prior, while Whitehead’s Poroporoaki and Fisher’s Tōrino respond in different ways to taonga pūoro. Ross Harris’s String Quartet No. 9 exhibits a distilled postmodern plurality in its chorale-based archism and subsequent fragmentation. The journey through these works is also a portrait of the richness of talent and imagination among New Zealand composers, performed by musicians whom they know as friends.

Continue reading “From Finland and the Fairground: New Classical CDs” →

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at 80: recordings and tributes

CorrinaLeave a comment

Despite its geographical isolation from the traditional centres of the operatic world, Aotearoa New Zealand has produced a remarkable number of exceptional opera singers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and this tradition shows every sign of continuing. Of all these outstanding ‘southern voices’, the most immediately and internationally recognisable is Dame Kiri te Kanawa, who celebrated her eightieth birthday on Wednesday 6 March 2024. You can access tributes to, and interviews with Kiri te Kanawa via Radio New Zealand, including Playing Favourites with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Happy Birthday, Dame Kiri, Dame Kiri at 80, and Dame Kiri’s 80th birthday, a day of celebration.

Wellington City Libraries hold in their collection many recordings, both on CD and DVD, of performances by Kiri Te Kanawa, including fully staged operas, and song recitals;  this blog will explore a handful of those recordings and other materials. Continue reading “Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at 80: recordings and tributes” →

New Service: Portable CD Players

MarkLeave a comment

Libraries are no longer just places to get books. We have a large collection of non-book items from music equipment, to power meters and C02 meters, to tablets and memory bags.

Once upon a time, most houses had a dedicated home electronic device that could play CDs through a home stereo set up or a television. However, the advent of music streaming services has replaced a majority of these physical devices and cars no longer come with CD players. While we still have a diverse collection of physical media, we realise that some of our patrons no longer have a way to appreciate our extensive music and audiobook collections, so we are excited to launch a new collection of portable CD players!

These lendable CD players enable you to listen to our music collection and enjoy audiobook stories with your whānau!

CD Player Kit, contents listed below

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February’s New Music for Te Awe Part 3

MarkLeave a comment

You can check out our first round up of new music for February here and part 2 here.

Albion / Harp (Musical group)
Neil Says: Albion is well named, as former Midlake frontman Tim Smith and his new musical partner Kathi Zung (who is also a puppet maker who has worked with the likes of Guillermo del Toro) have created a work immersed in lonely, windswept, bittersweet English landscapes where the misty moors are shrouded in perpetual twilight. They sought lyrical inspiration from the poetry of William Blake and musically inspiration from the likes of dream pop pioneers The Cocteau Twins and Fleetwood Mac. There are also, unsurprisingly, a few moments that suggest Tim’s previous band Midlake. A dreamy 80’s dream-pop inspired creation that also encompasses English pastoral music, and has a loneliness and eerie sadness running through it.

Gold / Sol, Cleo
Mark Says: Having released Heaven in September last (which made the Best of 2023 list of one of our colleagues), she followed it up with the surprise release of another album ‘Gold’ later that month. As always her music combines the best elements of neo-soul, classic 70’s soul, Jazz & spiritual touches. There’s just something about her music that makes her stand out from the other (too numerous to list) female artists currently mining the same retro sound. Perhaps it’s the organic minimalism of the music that leaves plenty of space for her brand of hopeful personal lyrics, the lack of processing around her vocals, or the way the albums function as a whole to create a sense of soothing calm and quiet strength. Another winner.
Neil Says: Wow, what an album. Intense, intimate, soulful, euphoric, languid and chilled; but it doesn’t achieve this at the expense of ignoring the darker aspects of life. The lyrics are as strong as the music and vocal delivery; everything about it fits and works perfectly. What makes it even more remarkable, is that it just a part of a creative explosion Cleo Sol is undergoing at the moment. She released another album barely a month before this, and is a core part of the phenomenal Sault outfit. It’s neo-soul with strong gospel influences, with a 70’s feel to the musical arrangements that, in places, reminded me of the mercurial Aretha Franklin. As I said at the start: Wow.

Continue reading “February’s New Music for Te Awe Part 3” →

February’s New Music for Te Awe Part 1

MarkLeave a comment


via GIPHY

Statler: Well, it was good.
Waldorf: Ah, it was very bad.
Statler: Well, it was average.
Waldorf: Ah, it was in the middle there.
Statler: Ah, it wasn’t that great.
Waldorf: I kind of liked it.”
-‘The Muppet Show’.

I’m Mark, the Music & Film Specialist at Wellington City Libraries. I buy music for the CD & Vinyl collections, and also run the Libraries’ Wellington Music Facebook page). My Music Specialist colleague Sam, and Fiction Specialist (and avid music fan) Neil, join me every month to cast an eye over the new material we have been buying for the music collection at our CBD Te Awe library. We pick out some interesting titles across a range of music genres, and try to limit our reviews to a few lines only. Can we encapsulate an entire album in just a couple of lines? [Ed. This is probably unlikely at this point]. Do we actually know anything about new music? Or, are we just too old to understand what most of this is banging on about? [Ed. This is more than likely]. Read on to find out…

Outta sync / Letts, Don
Neil Says: Legendary filmmaker, D.J, producer and musician Don Letts has released his first musical project since his work with Big Audio Dynamite in the 1990’s. He has worked in various creative guises with the likes of the Clash, The Psychedelic Furs, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders and Bob Marley, to name but a few, was a key instrumental figure in the British punk and reggae scenes, and has for many years presented his BBC radio six’s culture Clash radio show. ‘Outta sync’ is a personal album in many ways, and reflects his unique eclectic tastes and worldview. It is a mix of heavy-duty dub bass tracks with spoken word interwoven through, featuring a plethora of musical guests including Terry Hall, Wayne Coyne, Hollie Cook and his daughter Honor. He described the album as “a soundtrack to my mind with some cool bass lines”, which pretty much sums it up.

Continue reading “February’s New Music for Te Awe Part 1” →