Talking Music

In this work Sarah Shieff talks informally with a wide range of gifted composers and performers who have all made music their lives. Together, their recollections form a significant documentary history of New Zealand classical music since the 1940s.

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Fourteen musicians tell their stories about how they became who they are, the commitment required, the struggles, failures and successes, and the fierce ambition which has driven them. The interviews criss-cross with one another. They may be national stories but they are also international stories. They may be about musicians but they are also about artists, writers, sculptors, theatre practitioners and the intersections our art-forms have with one another. In the telling of their stories, through Sarah Shieff's interviews, all these working musicians invoke the much greater hinterland of culture-making and history-making in our country.