pixeltransfer design studio : berlin

Taonga Pūoro - Singing Treasures

Ngaro Rangi Taonga Pūoro - The forgotten voices of Māori musical instruments

The exhibition and video project is about the forgotten traditional Māori musical instruments (Taonga Pūoro) of New Zealand.

We will tell the story how the old musical instruments came back to live, through a small group of people.

- Hirini Melbourne is from Tuhoe and Ngati Kahungunu
- Dr. h.c. Richard Nunns
- Brian Flintoff

We have finished a video project with Dr. h.c. Richard Nunns who is playing the musical instruments, a pūtorino and two kōauau part of the Cook / Forster collection held in the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology of Göttingen University/Germany.

The documentary explores the collection of taonga pūoro artifacts held in the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology of Göttingen University/Germany. Collected during the three Pacific voyages undertaken by James Cook his crew and Johann and Georg Forster between 1768 and 1780, these 225-year-old artifacts provide a rare insight into the New Zealand cultures James Cook encountered. Richard Nunns will explain the cultural background of these instruments and will demonstrate how to play and handle them.

Richard Nunns plays the koauau form the Cook/Forster Collection

Scope / Synopsis
The documentary explores the collection of taonga pūoro artifacts held at the Georg-August University of Göttingen in Germany. Collected during the three Pacific voyages undertaken by James Cook and Johann and Georg Forster between 1768 and 1780, these 225-year-old artifacts provide a rare insight into the New Zealand cultures James Cook encountered. Richard Nunns will explain the cultural background of these instruments and will demonstrate how to play and handle them.

Dr. h.c. Richard Nunns
has been described as one of New Zealand's most remarkable musicians. A Pakeha (European New Zealander) who has become the living authority on taonga pūoro (traditional Māori music instruments), his journey has required a great deal of respect, perseverance and sensitivity - characteristics that inevitably emerge in the depths of his own music. He has a long history of personal commitment to researching and presenting / performing the traditional musical instruments of the Māori, and to organizing this body of knowledge into a form that is immediately understandable to people in general.

Honours
Laureates of the New Zealand Arts Foundation, 2009
New Zealand Music Hall of Fame 2009 - Announcing new inductees: Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns
The Queen's Service Medal for services to taonga puoro by the Governor-General of New Zealand, 2009.
He was honored with the Doctorate of Music honoris causa, from Victoria University of Wellington 2008.
Citation for outstanding services to New Zealand music, The Lilburn Trust, 2007
The Smash Palace Fund, jointly with Ian Whalley, Creative New Zealand, 2005
Honorary life member of the New Zealand Flute Association.
Citation for Services to New Zealand Music from the Composers Association of New Zealand, 2001.

Recordings that have been honoured
2007 Te Whaiao, Te Whaiao: Te Ku Te Whe Remixed won the Tui award for the best Māori album in the New Zealand Music Awards 2007.
2006 Spirit of the Land, won best classical album New Zealand Music Awards 2006.
2006 He Ara Puoro was commended as a finalist in 2006 Media Peace Awards.
2005 Te Hekenga-a-rangi, finalist in the New Zealand Music Awards 2005
2002 Te Ku Te Whe gained gold status.

Production pixeltransfer design studio
Producer / Director Benjamin Ochse
Set Filmproduction B.L.&P. Film und TV GmbH
Camera Stefan Kruse
Sound Timo Lewe
Video editing Benjamin Ochse
Postproduction Sound Robin Pohle, @TMO Audio Produktion
Transcript Te Miringa Hohaia (Translation te reo Māori) Antony Clark / Eliza Prestidge Oldfield
Location Cook / Forster Collection, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany.
Format DV PAL 16:9 | Approx: 30 Minutes | Language: Māori (English subtitles) / English

Cover composition: Sydney Parkinson, 1769; William Hodges 1775-76. (cover design is subject to change)

… fantastic! It is excellent and I can see why so many people are looking at it.

Mary O'Brien; Chief Editor, Flute Focus, NZ

… (the DVD is) very beautiful made, very thoughtfully accuracy and passion … .

Prof. Manfred Waffender, Institute for Music and Media at the Robert Schumann University for Music Düsseldorf, Germany

Thank you for alerting me to this marvellous documentary. I enjoyed watching the trailer very much.

Ian Boreham, Editor, Captain Cook Society, UK

More information on this project will be obtainable soon. If you like to learn more about the DVD please contact us directly.

The video documentary will be presented at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France and in Krakow at the Film Festival 2010.
In Vienna at the Museum of Ethnology in the James Cook exhibition.