New Zealand Musicological Society | Searches for Tradition

In this, Lilburn’s centenary year, the New Zealand School of Music is proud to host the 35th annual meeting of the New Zealand Musicological Society - Searches for Tradition.

In his 1946 address 'A Search for Tradition', composer Douglas Lilburn posed the question of whether the twentieth century had seen, or was likely to see, the development of a discrete national musical tradition specific to New Zealand.

Now well into the twenty-first century, contemporary musical life (in Aotearoa New Zealand as elsewhere) is shaped and informed by a rich diversity of expressive cultures and an unprecedentedly wide range of musical traditions. And while it remains central across a range of critical conversation, the notion of musical tradition itself has been productively challenged and widely reconceived, both in music studies and cultural studies more broadly: as a theoretical lens, as an historiographical technology, and as the discursive means of ongoing projects of cultural construction.

Keynote Speakers:

Philip Bohlman - Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and of Music, University of Chicago

Peter Walls - Emeritus Professor, Victoria University of Wellington

The well devised programme includes the following presentations as well as many more:

The New Zealand Jazz Tradition: A New Music or a Fair Copy? Norman Meehan - Massey University

A New Zealand Voice in Song? Judy Bellingham - University of Otago

Aotearoa or No Man's Land?: Lilburn and the Search for Identity Peter Walls - Victoria University of Wellington

Going to Town in the Big Jam: 'Official' Jam Sessions in the 1940s and the Development of the New Zealand Jazz Community Aleisha Ward - Independent Scholar

Trad Respect: Manifestations of the Jazz Tradition in Wellington Nick Tipping - New Zealand School of Music

The Influence of Minimalism on New Zealand Composers Anthony Ritchie University of Otago

SLIDE Transformations and Associativity in the Film Scores of Alexandre Desplat Ewan Clark - New Zealand School of Music