Special Event: Three One Act Operas by Dorothy Buchanan

Lineup:
"Woman at the Store"
"Daughters of the Late Colonel"
"Ms Brill"

Carmel Caroll – director

Dorothy Quita Buchanan graduated MusB (Hons) in composition from Canterbury University in 1967. For the next decade she worked as a freelance composer, pianist, violinist (Christchurch Symphony Orchestra) and teacher. In 1976 she was New Zealand’s first composer-in-schools and in 1979 became both president of the Composers’ Association of New Zealand and the first woman to join the Musicians’ Union. Dorothy has been a guest lecturer, musical director, adjudicator, adviser to teacher support services and an assessor on QEII Arts Council (later Creative New Zealand) panels. She was on the artistic directorate of the Smokefree Women’s Composing Festival for seven years.

Organisations as diverse as school choirs, string quartets, dance and theatre companies and symphony orchestras have commissioned songs, operas, incidental music and film and television scores. Dorothy's work for the New Zealand Film Archive from 1984 carried on the family tradition begun by her maternal grandmother Molly Clarke, who played piano for silent movies on the West Coast in the early 1920s. Dorothy’s arrangement of the original score for the classic silent film ‘La Passion de Jeanne D’Arc’ is considered the finest rendering ever. Many of her works are settings for voice of poems by New Zealand poets including Lauris Edmond, Fleur Adcock and Janet Frame. She has collaborated with New Zealand writers to produce major operas like the ‘Clio Legacy’ (Witi Ihimaera) and ‘Woman at the Store’ and ‘The Mansfield Stories’, both from the short stories of Katherine Mansfield. ‘Fragments and Letters’, based on her friendship with singer Malcolm McNeill, won the Philip Neill Memorial Prize from the University of Otago in 1995.

Awards include a CANZ Outstanding Achievement Award, the Vernon Griffiths Memorial Award for Outstanding Musical Leadership and a Sufferage Medal. In 2001 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for a lifetime’s involvement in music.

Carmel Caroll is based in Auckland, New Zealand, and works nationally and internationally. She is equally renowned for her singing and directing work.

Fundraising for 2011 Voice Class Productions.

Event listed by cchi163

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