Michael Norris has won the 2019 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for Sama, a concerto for violin and orchestra.
The award recognises New Zealand compositions demonstrating outstanding levels of creativity and inspiration.
SOUNZ Chair Elizabeth Kerr presented the Award at the 2019 APRA Silver Scroll Awards held at Spark Arena in Auckland on Wednesday 3 October.
Reviewing the premiere of Sama for RNZ Concert in December 2018, Elizabeth Kerr said:
“Michael Norris has written a highly virtuosic concerto, but also responded to [Orchestra Wellington concertmaster Amalia] Hall’s lyrical abilities with very beautiful moments in an intriguing work.
"Sama is the Arabic word for ‘listening’, and a Sufi ceremony including whirling dervishes, spinning in a trance-like state. The work has shimmering exotic timbres and harmonies with unusual percussion sounds adding colour and atmosphere.
"The central slow movement has very beautiful otherworldly sounds including sliding harmonics, with the solo violin a thread in the texture, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes floating above.
"The whirling dervishes are in charge of the very fast third movement, with lots of glissandi, the whirling picked up from the soloist by the winds and other sections. It builds with galloping drums and virtuosic timpani and then the piece disappears upwards into the ether with delicate string harmonics.”
On the night, the winning piece was re-imagined by Nathan Haines and band, thus:
Third time winner
This was Norris’ sixth nomination for the SOUNZ Contemporary Award, which he won in 2014 with Inner Phases and again in 2018 with Sygyt.
Michael Norris Photo: Supplied
The Wellington-based composer, software programmer and music theorist teaches composition, sonic arts and post-tonal music theory at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music and is editor of Wai-te-ata Music Press. He is also the Co-Director of Stroma New Music Ensemble.
The Violin Concerto Sama was commissioned by Orchestra Wellington, featuring soloist Amalia Hall. Michael Norris says:
“When I was phoned up by Marc Taddei from Orchestra Wellington to commission a new violin concerto featuring Amalia Hall, I was glad for the opportunity, but when I then subsequently heard her play the Bartók Violin Concerto, I knew immediately that this was going to be something very special and important to me.”
Inspired by the Mevlevi Sama Ceremony of Turkey, the work depicts the vast realms of earth and sky, and the visual spectacle of the whirling dancers who act as conduits between them.
“The Violin Concerto ’Sama’ started life when I was thinking about the way in which music can be used to suggest directionality or abstract types of movement — such as the movement of bodies, the movement of biological organisms, even the movement of celestial objects. I was particularly interested in this idea of ‘centripetal’ motion: orbiting, circling, vorticality, whirling, spinning. I had already explored these kinds of motion in other works of mine, particularly the Deep Field series in which instrumental sounds are processed and ’spun’ around a circular eight-channel array by computer.” - Michael Norris.
SOUNZ Contemporary award finalists 2019: Chris Watson, Chris Gendall, Michael Norris. Photo: supplied by APRA / AMCOS NZ
The SOUNZ Contemporary Award, celebrating its 21st anniversary this year, recognises New Zealand compositions demonstrating outstanding levels of creativity and inspiration and has been presented in collaboration with APRA AMCOS NZ since 1998.
Previous winners include the three 2019 finalists, Salina Fisher, Eve de Castro-Robinson, Ross Harris, John Psathas and Gillian Whitehead.
