A musical marriage
Not only have they never played together, only one has any real inkling of how the project is likely to unfold. They have just five days to rehearse before the shows world premiere at the tiny North Island west coast surf settlement of Raglan, population 3500, next Saturday. Forty-eight hours later, Green Fire Islands will be headlining at Wellingtons Michael Fowler Centre as part of the International Arts Festival. A further two performances are planned for Womad in New Plymouth, on March 14 and 15, before a final show in Auckland on St Patricks Day two days later.
The project has been almost a decade in the making and follows a long, and often long-distance, association between legendary Irish musician Donal Lunny and the shows producer, Bronwen Christianos, a Raglan writer and author.
The pair met at a Guinness music festival here in the late 90s. Five years later, when Christianos was holidaying in Ireland, they renewed their friendship, discovering a shared interest in their own, and each others culture. The seed was sown.
They hope Green Fire Islands will build a bridge between the two, along the way capturing and reinvigorating musical tradition. The arrangements will incorporate pieces for taonga puoro, played by Richard Nunns (considered to be the living authority on the traditional Maori instruments), and the Irish bouzouki, with one of the shows highlights expected to be a stirring group kapa haka.
The exercise, from the initial preparations to the finale in Auckland, is being filmed by New Zealand cinematographer Alun Bollinger, whose past work includes Goodbye Pork Pie, Vigil and Heavenly Creatures.
DONAL LUNNYMusical director, Ireland
Hes been described as the man with the longest CV in Irish music and, possibly even more famously, as the Quincy Jones of that genre by U2 frontman Bono. Donal Lunny, as anyone with only a passing interest in the Emerald Isle knows, is Irish music.
He has worked with some impressive folk - Clannad, Christy Moore, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, and Sinead OConnor, with whom he has a son - and is credited with being the driving force behind a major rennaisance of his countrys traditional music.
Now living in Okinawa, Japan, Lunny admits hes on edge about this latest project. A glass or two of that wonderful Cloudy Bay, would, he reckons, go down a treat right about now.
The musicians have never played together before. Weve got five days to rehearse and then were into it, so its going to be hectic. Its not keeping me awake at night just yet. Maybe next week it will.
The project - similar to others he has worked on with musicians from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and most recently Japan, where traditional and contemporary music is blended to produce a new and vital hybrid - had its genesis in a bit of idle chat, says Lunny.
He met producer Christianos and her family a decade ago during a tour to New Zealand and was charmed. We talked and we talked some more, and it grew from there.
He has since spent three years researching the history of New Zealand and its musical connections with Ireland. On one of several fact-finding trips, Lunny was introduced to singer-songwriter Whirimako Black, whom Christianos had also invited to be part of the show.
We sat down together. She had this absolutely beautiful song that she sang to me and I played a bit. It was really very, very special, says Lunny.
He is putting an accompaniment to that song and to others, including a suite of works by Kapiti poet Glenn Colquhoun, and passages from The Tain, a seventh-century poetical tale.
Next week, the Irish contributions will get a further local makeover, courtesy of the taonga puoro, and the New Zealand ones will get the reverse, with the addition of harp, fiddle and bodhran.
Lunny laughs - its long and gravelly, with more than a hint of a lifetime of cigarettes - at the suggestion the whole thing may turn into some sort of weird nouveau Celtic-Pacific miscellany.
I certainly hope not. We will definitely be taking some liberties, but never without respect, so hopefully the result wont be a pastiche.
He points out the works share parallels - mythologically, historically and politically.
Certainly the music is quite different, but if you look at both cultures we have a lot in common. Ireland only achieved independence 100 years ago, and New Zealand has the Treaty of Waitangi.
Lunny, who turns 61 during the tour - March 10 but Im not going to tell anyone - needs only slight prompting with his pronunciation of Waitangi. With typical Irish understatement, he needs none whatsoever when asked whether he took Bonos comparison with the legendary composer and producer Mr Jones as a compliment.
I did. Im not sure how Quincy Jones took it. Ive been called lots of things. That was one of the nicest.
And theres that smokers chuckle again.
WHIRIMAKO BLACKSinger-songwriter, NZ
Whirimako Black initially turned down approaches to become involved with Green Fire Islands. It was 2005 and her father, Stewart, had just died. She was grieving, unfocused.
But a long-held fascination with her Celtic heritage - she is Tuhoe, with Scottish ancestry on her fathers side and Irish on her mothers - got the better of her.
I have a patupaiarehe [Maori fairy] on one shoulder and a leprechaun on the other. I rang Bronwen [producer Christianos] and said Im in.
At her first meeting with Lunny, Black was as enamoured of him, as he was with her, describing their subsequent jam sesssion - he played bouzouki - as the most natural thing.
It was beautiful. We were like two peas out of the same pod.
Black, whose voice - she sings classic jazz in both English and te reo - has been compared to that of Nina Simone, contributed two songs: one self-penned that celebrates the origins of human life through the creation of the first woman, Hineahuone, along with a traditional Tuhoe lament of farewell.
Given most of the collaboration so far has been by phone and e-mail, she is not sure how Lunny will interpret them but is happy to accommodate whatever he comes up with, even Irish jigs or folksy homilies.
The interesting bit is how its going to be presented - how we represent who we are, how we create that universal conversation. I presume the taongo puoro will be used as a constant thread, so Aotearoa will be there at the start, the middle and the end.
Despite the premiere being just days away, Black is, unlike the musical director, relaxed about the project, though there were some initial reservations.
Donal was talking about there being a mad scramble to get the arrangements down, but reading between the lines I think hes really excited about it. Hes the one with the hardest job, the one that has to make sense of it all, so that everyone - and thats the artists and the audience - gets something out of it.
It wont just be painting by numbers. Theres a real intention and drive by everyone who is involved. And if it turns out to be like a Maori Clannad, or Ten Guitars with pipes, who cares? Its about bringing those two cultures together and talking to one another musically.
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Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 8:27 pm under