Luminata Voices - Let Her Voice Shine

A relatively new choir in Auckland, the all-woman Luminata Voices perform a concert of music by New Zealand women composers in St Matthew's-in-the-City. Their musical director Vanessa Kay conducts.

Luminata Voices formed on the back of an assessment that Musical Director Vanessa Kay had to do for her MMus in conducting. She had put together a scratch choir of friends – mixed voices – for that assessment. But then some of the women involved thought that it would be fun to continue with a choir focusing on female voice repertoire. They gave their first concert in May 2021.

Vanessa Kay is a very busy conductor and teacher. Head of the Music Department at Rosmini College, she’s choral director of North Shore Youth Music and also conducts Con Brio Choir, the North Shore Children’s Choir and North Shore Songsters.

This concert, 'Let Her Voice Shine', is a celebration of music by women composers of Aotearoa.

Katherine BELL: Te Mea Nui

Katherine Bell has based this work on three Māori whakataukī (proverbs) that used to hang in Christchurch Cathedral. The piece has taken on significance as a lament both for Bell’s father and the victims of the Christchurch earthquakes.

The three whakataukī are

• He aha te mea nui o te ao?; he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What is the the most important thing in the world? People.
• Aroha atu, aroha mai. Love received, love returned
• Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa. Let us keep close together, not wide apart.

Katherine DIENES-WILLIAMS: Ave Maria

Katherine Dienes-Williams is from Wellington originally but moved to the UK in 1991 and has held a number of church and cathedral posts there since. She’s currently Master of the Choristers and Organist at Guildford Cathedral.

The Ave Maria text comes from Luke’s Gospel, the words of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary carrying Jesus in her womb: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women”.

Cheryl CAMM: Motu Puketutu

Cheryl Camm currently lives in Northumberland. She once held the position of Composer in Schools here in Aotearoa and it was then that she wrote Motu Puketutu ... a setting of Robyn Trinick’s poem about the island in the Manukau Harbour.

Bronwyn Harrison takes a solo in this.

Elizabeth Lau (double bass), David Kay, Rhianna Maker (percussion)

Dorothy KER: Snake, and Echo, from Close up of a Daisy

Dorothy Ker's cycle of six songs, Close Up of a Daisy, is created from the six two-line fragments of a poem by Ruth Dallas. Each song encapsulates a particular aural or visual image and uses concise phrases and repetition to create fleeting, impressionistic textures.

Luminata Voices sings two of the songs from the cycle: Snake: “The spotted and diamond patterned snake slides like melting snow through grass”,  and Echo: “Voices of kings fly echoing down corridors and walls of palaces”.

David Kay (percussion)

Cheryl CAMM: Banana Fanfare

 A short and tasty work. The text needs no interpretation.

Rosa ELLIOTT: Out of Reach

Rosa Elliott sets the poem The World is Great by George Eliot. The first verse runs:

The world is great!
The birds fly from me;
The stars are golden fruit
Upon a tree
All out of reach
My little sister went and I am lonely.

Rachel Song is the pianist.

Rosa ELLIOTT: Light

Light uses a text by Rabindranath Tagore.

This work was specially commissioned by Luminata Voices for this concert – this is the world premiere performance.

Rachel Song is the pianist.

Leonie HOLMES: Land Pictures

This is a five movement work setting the words of Anne Powell. In these poems, the larger themes of honouring land and ancestry are intertwined with the memories of small and intimate scenes from everyday life.

1. Land Pictures
2. Nana's Measure
3. Interlude
4. Intent
5. Blessing

The work is scored with a harp accompaniment but the harpist tested positive for Covid-19 on the morning of the concert. The choir failed to find a last minute replacement harpist, so Robert Wiremu stepped in to transcribe and play the harp part on the piano ... all done with Leonie Holmes’s blessing.

Sarah BELKNER: Poem from War

Sarah Belkner is a New Zealand singer and composer based in Sydney. As well as her work in contemporary classical music, she also works in a more pop-related field. She released an album in 2017 called ‘But You Are, But It Has’ which got some great reviews.

Poem From War is a setting of Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’.

The soloist is Celia Aspey-Gordon and the pianist Rachel Song.

Tuirina WEHI: Kia au tō moe

Tuirina Wehi writes of her waiata, Kia au tō moe, (“Let your sleep be sound”), “this waiata sings of the unconditional love a mokopuna has for her late grandmother and encourages her spirit to let go and move on to te wāhi ngaro” (the hidden realm, the world of gods and spirits).

The guitarist is Deane Siakimotu

Recorded by RNZ Concert, St Matthew's-in-the-City, Auckland, 10 September 2022
Producer: Tim Dodd; Engineer: Rangi Powick