2018 APRA Silver Scroll Awards Photo: supplied
The 2018 APRA Silver Scrolls awards are on Thursday night. As well as awarding New Zealand's best pop songwriter of the year, the ceremony also recognises our best Maori songwriters, and local television, film and classical music composers.
RNZ Music's Yadana Saw takes us through some of these nominees ahead of our local music industry's big night.
Maioha Award
The APRA Maioha Award recognises the art of contemporary Māori songwriting and honours composers who are telling their stories in te reo Māori.
This year's finalists are Ria Hall for 'Te Ahi Kai Po'; Rob Ruha's 'Uia' and Seth Haapu for 'Ngaru Hōu'.
READ: 2018 APRA Maioha Award Finalists
Best Original Music in a Series
Awarded to the composers and musicians who make the music we "see" or don't always notice, but definitely feel.
The nominees for the award which recognises excellence in this field are
- Karl Steven – Dear Murderer
- Matt Caradus – The Cul De Sac
- Samuel Flynn Scott, Lukasz Pawel Buda & Thomas Conrad Wedde – Cleverman
READ: SOUNZ Contemporary Classical and Soundtrack Finalists
Best Original Music in a Feature Film
Stephen Gallagher has been nominated for his work on the psychological thriller Human Traces.
The film’s director, Nic Gorman actually plays the accordion on this soundtrack. And on cello, banjo and guitars is David Long, who is also a fellow nominee in this category.
David Long, who composed the original music for the Roger Donaldson directed film McLaren. David is a producer,musician (he’s one of The Muttonbirds) and composer with a considerable list of credits across music.
Also nominated in this category is Sean Joyce Donnelly, who may be better known as SJD. His work on the film The Free Man by Toa Fraser about extreme sports people including freestyle skier Jossi Wells.
SOUNZ Contemporary Award
This year’s shortlist was whittled down from 51 entries by 37 composers.
We have five-time nominee and 2014 SOUNZ winner Michael Norris with 'Sygrt'. A teacher of composition and post-tonal music theory at Te Kōkī New Zealand School.
The piece he composed was for the Stroma New Music Ensemble and it features throat singer Jonny Marks from All Seeing Hand.
It’s quite fascinating composition because Michael had to invent notation freehand for Johnny’s throat singing parts. Normally throat singing is improvised.
First time nominee is Rosie Langabeer for her composition 'Occulmente'
When she entered this piece of music for consideration the only recording she had was a very low-quality version recorded on her phone.
For her composition is about capturing the magic of music. “[this is] exploring the subconscious mind… a spell. Music [is] a certain combination of sounds used to cast a spell.”
The final nomination in this category is 'Dance of the Wintersmith' by Leonie Holmes, inspired by the Terry Pratchett novel Wintersmith.
