Bonjour! Vanessa and I are being billeted with a lovely family living in Le Vésinet. It is a western suburb of Paris known for its wooded avenues and bourgeois mansions…it’s just so beautiful here. We are enjoying the last of the autumn colours and having been taking bike rides along the river near our house in our spare time.

We’ve been to two concerts so far. The first was in informal soirée where anyone can get up and perform while the others drink, eat and chat. The second was a concert, by Naccara, of six harps, percussion and double bass. They memorized the full 1 ½ concert and even added theatrical elements – moving around the stage, swapping instruments and using their stools and harps as percussive instruments.

We are in the middle of preparing for our two concerts. The first is a soirée for the France – NZ Association on the 30th November. Vanessa and Charmian are playing in Daniel Rémy’s String Quartet. I have been watching them rehearse Haydn’s ‘the emperor’ Quartet and Bartok’s Violin Duos to name a few. It will be a great concert! The rehearsals for the second concert will kick off tonight. In this concert a string orchestra will perform Shaker Loops by John Adams, Serenade for Strings by Nigel Keay and my own dans la nuit. The performance is next Thursday the 7th Dec. Yesterday, I met with the conductor Elizabeth Askren to go through the score which went well. Fingers crossed that there aren’t some horrendous mistakes in my parts or something like that!

Not long ago I attended the NZSO/TODD Young Composers Awards. Ten composers aged between 13 and 23 years old gathered for two days in Wellington to hear their five minute compositions rehearsed and recorded by the NZSO. Hamish McKeich, the conductor did a fantastic job getting through all our pieces on time. We had mentoring by Lyell Cresswell who was really supportive and helpful. There were also some ‘extras’ – a tuba demonstration, tour of the NZSO music library and a talk by Claire Cowan about the NYO Composer-in-Residence scheme. My piece, La Sagrada Familia was on last. This was a little scary as it was just before the awards presentation and a number of important people were there. Anyway, Karlo Margetic and I were announced joint winners. We were then whisked off up to Radio New Zealand to do an interview for Concert FM. It will appear on Upbeat! soon – I’ll post with a date later.

I just brought my ticket to London! I had to make a really quick decision as a lot of the 2007 Earlybird specials ended today. I’m flying out on the 29th of March – which isn’t very far away considering what I have to do before then…let me make a list…go to Paris, write a CMNZ Commission, a MCSO Commission, attend the ACL Asia Pacific Festival in Feb, complete and hand in my Masters… I am getting a little panicked thinking … I won’t be getting much sunshine this summer!!

Today I also did a pre-recoded interview for National Radio. It will be broadcast next Sunday, 19th Nov. I’m not sure what time yet. I’ll try to find out. Please tune in!

If you would like to view photos from the Edwin Carr Foundation Scholarship presentation please visit Robert Catto’s website. Robert seems to go for the ‘in the moment look’

FANTASTIC NEWS!! I have just won the $20,000 Edwin Carr Foundation Scholarship. I’ve been sitting on this information in secrecy for weeks – now I can finally tell you all I was flown down to Wellington today to attend the official presentation at the Creative New Zealand Offices. Tony Carr (Edwin’s younger brother) flew over from Australia to present the scholarship. I made a little speech and played two of my pieces. ‘pizzicato’ from my String Quartet and Tu-mata-uenga “God of War, Spirit of Man” for Orchestra. I am going to use this scholarship to extend the overseas study I had planned with my APRA PD Award. I initially intended on spending 6 weeks visiting composers in the UK and Germany. I will now base myself in Europe for about 7 months to further develop my composing and to attend summer music festivals. I will post more details soon! – I also want to thank Rose, Mairead and Ruth at CreativeNZ for organising a great event. Click here to see a picture of me with Tony Carr, the brother of Edwin Carr and a trustee of the Edwin Carr Foundation, and Creative New Zealand Chief Executive Stephen Wainwright at the presentation in Wellington.