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UPDATE: 11/10/2012 - The first Music at Mojo has been a great success and we'll be looking to continue the series around New Zealand next year. Sign up to our e-newsletter In The Loop and we'll be sure to let you know when the next one is coming up.
In the beginning chamber music was all about intimacy - small musical groups performing specially composed pieces in private homes for friends, family and music lovers. Hundreds of years later, as the love of the music has grown so has the size of the venue in which it is performed. And fair enough – a larger concert venue means more people can experience the magic of chamber music.
In September/October 2012, Chamber Music New Zealand took the chamber music experience back to its roots with the best of our country’s chamber music ensembles.
The first Wellington Music at Mojo series was an authentic chamber music get together, with 3 nights of music across 6 weeks at Mojo Invincible.
Featuring the famous New Zealand String Quartet, 18th century music specialist Erin Helyard playing fortepiano and finishing off with the smooth sounds of saxophone quartet Saxcess.
Each night was an opportunity to sit back and relax while getting up close to the music, the musicians and the stories behind them both.
A little taster from SAXCESS (performed 11 October)
This talented saxophone quartet storm the bastions at Mojo! They are Saxcess, celebrating their 20th birthday this year, and they bring with them the greatest hits of the classical repertoire, from long before the saxophone was born. Italian baroque! Traditional spirituals! The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba! Nothing is safe.
Led by Debbie Rawson on soprano sax and complemented by Graham Hanify, baritone, Reubin Chin alto and Simon Brew on tenor. This quartet have a wonderful mixture of jazz, classical and cutting edge contemporary.
The programme includes music from Frescobaldi's Canzona, Gershwin's Blues from ‘American in Paris’, Jean Francaix's saxaphone quartet, modern German composer Ludger Klisters' Journey and Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.
A little taster from ERIN HELYARD (performed 27 September)
Coffee is Wellington’s pride – and it was for late eighteenth-century Vienna as well. Mozart himself liked it black (of course) with a pipe of tobacco, and the story goes that the Viennese first discovered coffee in discarded bags left by the Turks after the Battle of Vienna. This concert presents Mozart’s Turkish-flavoured Piano Sonata in A major, K: 331, presented on a copy of a Viennese fortepiano from 1795 together with “period” sound effects! And Mozart’s hit tunes are also presented as remixed by his contemporaries in works never heard before in New Zealand: Auguste Eberharde Müller, Johann Baptist Cramer, and Josepha Barbara von Auernhammer.
A little taster from the NZ STRING QUARTET (performed 13 September)
With a dynamic performing style and beautiful sound the NZ String Quartet are particularly known for their imaginative programming and insightful musical interpretations. In Music at Mojo the they will be dishing up a great variety of classical composers. Like delving into a selection of bite-sized morsels from a delicious box of chocolates, it will be a chance to indulge in a sampler size assortment of tasty titbits from Beethoven, Haydn, Jack Body, Gershwin and Dvořák. Yum.
Proudly supported by Radio Active.
