Composer Adrien de Croy Photo: Supplied
You probably know the story of TradeMe, the Kiwi online trading place that turned Sam Morgan into a millionaire and a household name.
You might also know TradeMe's success in the early 2000s was partly down to its ability to work around New Zealand's then dependence on dial-up modem access to the internet, where overseas trading platforms like eBay could not so easily reach.
Just quietly, Adrien de Croy was doing something similar. The Hamilton-raised businessman developed a product called WinGate, which allowed all the computers in an office to access the internet, even if only one computer was online - on dial-up, of course.
WinGate's success gave de Croy the money to invest in other ventures and the time to put energy into one of the other big things in his life: composing.
Charles Ives, also a dab hand in the business world. Photo: Public Domain
Like Charles Ives, the US insurance salesman who confounded the music world with his unique creations, de Croy is writing symphonies. Well, at least one.
The Manukau Symphony Orchestra is premiering the work later this month, and de Croy isn't holding back on making a statement with it.
Speaking to RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump, de Croy says he wrote the work during Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war between the two nations.
When the orchestra's conductor Uwe Grodd first saw the score he suggested de Croy give it a name. The composer's choice was "The Resolute".
His feelings of admiration for the people of Ukraine, and his concern about their fate, are caught up in symphony's four movements.
Crump plays a passage from the third movement called 'Shattered Dreams'. De Croy explains the music was inspired by the nightly air raids Ukrainian friends were enduring. It was as if, he says, Russia was deliberately trying to sleep-deprive the people of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.
"Their dreams literally were shattered."
Crump asks de Croy if he is nervous about how a work, with such an overt message, will go down with the audience.
He says he'd be lying if he didn't own up to having a few butterflies in his stomach, but he also strongly believes if someone has something they really want to do, fear of failure shouldn't hold them back.
A bit like his symphony, de Croy is resolute on that.
