THE NEW ZEALAND OPERA SOCIETY

Since the Trust CD of Gisborne soprano Mere Boynton arrived some weeks ago, it has been in my CD player a couple a times, while I wondered whether it fitted within the ambit of this magazine to review. Mere Boynton is certainly a formally trained singer (Wellington Conservatorium of Music) who has sung opera (Frasquita in Carmen and Adalgisa in Norma, both for Gisborne Opera), but her performing range is much wider than that.

She played the part of Mavis in the film Once Were Warriors and she was a striking performer in Gareth Farr’s composition that opened Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, performed memorably in its lofty cathedral-like atrium. She sang in Te Rangimarie composed for the Millennium celebrations in Gisborne and she supported the Prime Minister’s 2001 tour to South America with concert performances. Mere also performed the soprano obbligato role in Michael Parmenter’s dance opera Jerusalem.

Gareth Farr has been Mere’s collaborator in this album, and three of the songs are his compositions or arrangements. Other are by Richard Nunns (whose series of extraordinary short illustrated talks on his life’s work with Maori music and musical instruments is being broadcast at noon every day on Concert FM’s Upbeat, and repeated at 5pm: don’t neglect them – they are spell-binding), Hirini Melbourne, Gillian Whitehead, Paul Booth, Wiremu Kerekere, and the ubiquitous, magical ‘Hine e hine’ by Princess Te Rangi Pai.

The tone of some of the early songs in the album is didactic, even political, but their performance has such a feeling of sincerity and artistic integrity that music and meaning combine without discomfort.

For the first song in the collection, Mere chooses, tellingly, ‘Tangi Haehae’ (Torn by Grief), a very explicit cry against the abuse of girls.

“I whisper to the wind – is this our legacy, the abuse of women? No, no, never! …Support our young girls so they may grow with strength and without hindrance … Tangi haehae, ngau i taku ate (torn by grief that gnaws at the seat of my heart), Tangi haehae e”. The song is composed by Farr and accompanied by angry percussion.

Other songs lament the loss of language and of bird species, but then there are calm, sentimental songs like the love song ‘He Wawata’ where Mere is joined by baritone Wiremu Winiata and piano accompaniment. Every two or three songs are punctuated by a short performance from Nunns on various Maori flutes: putorino, putatara, koauau and others.

A song by Mere Boynton herself, ‘Tawhiti’, a beautiful lullaby for a love-child, recalls for me similarly-voiced Greek popular songs that touch me deeply. Hirini Melbourne’s ‘Nga Tamariki o te Kohu’ had the same effect.

Several songs later in the collection are accompanied by string quartet. I found it remarkable that, after the flutes, percussion, guitar or piano that accompanied the earlier songs, this essentially western sound was not in the least out of place.

Three delicious love songs to words by Mere and music by Paul Booth make seductive listening, greatly enriched by the quartet of NZSO string players: ‘Rere Atu Rere Mai’ is haunting and memorable; the last of them ‘Tui, tui, tuia’ is a grief-stricken lament for her mother, who seems to be a symbol for a much more all-encompassing sense of loss.

This is an emotion-rich, beautifully conceived collection of music that I’m sure offers a cord connecting them, not only to Mere Boynton’s own and her people’s losses but also to a spiritual landscape that has become a subliminal anchor to Maori as well as to all New Zealanders who have their roots in this place and no other. (Waikohu: MTT 2034)