for 12 instrumentalists | c. 6' | 2024​

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for Lucerne Festival Academy ​

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World premiere: 31 August 2024, Culture and Congress Centre, Lucerne, as part of Lucerne Festival 2024. International Ensemble Modern Academy conducted by Josephine Korda.

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German premiere: 3 December 2024, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt. Ensemble Modern conducted by Raimonda Skabeikaitė.

 

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The title To Shimmer, To Quiver, To Quake was inspired by the definition given in Te Aka, the online te reo Māori dictionary, for the verb wiriwiri: 'to tremble, shiver, shake, quiver'. Te Aka also lists these examples of uses of the verb: 

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Me te mea tērā ko te haka a Tānerore, e wiriwiri nei i te raumati.

It was as if Tānerore's haka was the shimmering of the heat haze in the summer. 

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Wiriwiri ana ngā papa o ngā hōia i te mataku.

The soldiers were shaking with fear. 

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Wiriwiri is most commonly associated with haka; and the qualities of fearsomeness and fearfulness, as well as a kind of radiant summer heat, are all prominent, I hope, in my piece. And 'to quake', of course, refers to Aotearoa's famous quaking landscape. 

 

Images (below): the world premiere performance at Lucerne Festival, Priska Ketterer © Lucerne Festival; in conversation with Jagdish Mistry (Ensemble Modern) at the German premiere, Barbara Fahle © Ensemble Modern; Raimonda Skabeikaitė conducts Ensemble Modern as part of the Happy New Ears series in the German premiere, © Barbara Fahle.