William Dart reviewed the Auckland concert. Here is what he said about my composition, Twitter, in the NZ Herald on August 10th. “Robin Toan’s Twitter took to the great outdoors. Who might have thought walking the dog in a bird-filled park would occasion such invention?” To read the rest of the review follow this link.
With Daniela Wahler
With Elizabeth Farrell
With Dieter Mack
The Christchurch Symphony Orchestra on May 2nd in the Christchurch Town Hall.
They performed the Schumann Piano Concerto Op. 54 in a minor with French pianist Emmanuel Despax, Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus and Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 The Pastoral and Island of Wine by Robin Toan. They were conducted by Tom Wood.
My latest composition written in at the end of 2007, Witch Scarers, has been selected for the May session of the 2008 NZSO/SOUNZ readings. Witch Scarers is about Antonio Gaudi’s chimneys on Casa Mila (La Pedrera), in Barcelona. The apartment building was built between 1906 and 1910 and the roof contained chimneys and air ducts that were so eerie that they were nicknamed espantabruxes (witch-scarers).
I’m really looking forward to spending a couple of days in Wellington listening to new works and meeting with lots of musical people!
Welcome to the ‘new look’ www.robintoan.com!
The new face of robintoan.com is officially online today! This website was professionally made for me by Websites made2order they are a new web design and development company based in Auckland, New Zealand. I can’t recommend them enough as they had super creative skills (I just love the look of my website and what it does..), speedy service (I got my new website within a week of ordering) and value for money.
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The new features of my website site are endless…well! almost 
Along with my ‘new look’ website I’m also launching Services today!
I am offering the following professional services.
I take pride in providing high quality, fast and friendly service. Take a look at the new Services section of my website to read more today!
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.
–Breaking News—Breaking News–
I’ve just found out that my entry, Le Marteau du Destin has been selected as the New Zealand entry in the Asia Pacific Festival 2007 Young Composers Competition. The Festival runs from the 8th-16th of February in Wellington. Each country participating in the festival may enter one piece in this category. I will get flown down to Wellington for the duration of the festival by CANZ and ACL will provide me with accommodation, breakfast and lunch. An early version of this composition was played at the Nelson Composers Workshop in 2004. Some of you may have heard it then. For those of you who don’t know this piece. It’s for seven instruments; voice, clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, violin, cello, percussion and piano. I have set five Japanese Haiku to music. The first movement is based on a Haiku by Issa and goes like this… Before this autumn wind Even the shadows of mountains Shudder and tremble I’m currently inputting the score onto Sibelius so that I can make easy to read parts. Originally the score was hand written and graphically notated and it made things a bit chancy in performance!! For more information about the Festival and Young Composers Competition follow the link to the CANZ website at the bottom the page.
I’ve just been informed that I am the 2006 recipient of the SOUNZ Community Commission! I will be writing a fanfare for the Manukau City Symphony Orchestra to play in 2007. It will be a really exciting piece with strong cultural themes – I’ll be asking the orchestra to chant, use their instruments in extreme ways and all sorts of other crazy things. But, but, but… I really want it to be enjoyable for the audience and players too. Challenging…
Click here to read an article about it on the SOUNZ website.
It’s official! Vanessa Tam, Charmian Keay and I are off to Paris on November the 20th with the help of the New Zealand/France-Friendship Fund. We are putting on a concert on December the 7th at the Cité Universitaire with a new string orchestra, Orchestre 2021 which will be conducted by Elizabeth Askren. She is Attachée Culturelle at the United States Foundation in Paris. I will be writing a fifteen minute work for String Orchestra over the next couple of months for the concert. Vanessa and Charmian will be playing their violins in the concert. They will also be doing some informal chamber music with Nigel Keay’s String Quartet during our 18 days there. I’m so excited!!
Hi guys! I’ve just been commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand to write a work for piano and violin. It will be performed by John Chen and Julia McCarthy in September 2007 in their 16 concert tour of NZ.
