SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION : Songs For Barry Brickell
BACKGROUND
In 1966 Barry's sister, Andrea, married Robert Oliver. Over the years the three of them dreamed of the possibility of doing a concert tour at stations along the North Island Main Trunk Line. After Barry died in 2016, and Andrea three years later, Robert twice attempted the tour with his consort of viols, a taonga pūoro player, and Greg O'Brien who would perform Barry's poetry and narrate aspects of his life. Twice the tour was cancelled because of COVID. Robert decided to perform two concerts in 2023, one at Futuna Chapel in Wellington, the other at Te Ngākau Tapu in Porirua.
MUSIC
MAHINA-INA KINGI-KAUI, taonga pūoro
REIDUN TURNER, treble viol
SOPHIA ACHESON, treble viol
ROBERT OLIVER, tenor and bass viol
KAREN FRENCH, bass viol
IMOGEN GRANWAL, bass viol
The soundtrack for the film is from this concert, Music and Memory: A Concert for Barry Brickell performed by Robert Oliver and the Palliser Viols with renowned taonga pūoro player, Mahina-Ina Kingi-Kaui.
ROBERT OLIVER
REIDUN TURNER
KAREN FRENCH
MAHINA-INA KINGI-KAUI
SOPHIE ACHESON
IMOGEN GRANWAL
While this soundtrack for the film provides aural context and structure for sequences of stills and video along a range of themes, two compositions by Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead are prominently featured for both their performances and their close alignment to Barry's philosophy and values.
Puhake ki te Rangi (“spouting to the skies”) is a homage to the extraordinary world of whales. It has an ethereal beauty, the whale’s voice floats from the resonant instruments, lost and mournful. A strong call from the trumpet-like pūtātara ends the piece, reinforcing Dame Gillian’s message that taonga pūoro are “a sonic link to the past of our country.”
Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited, regards the mountains in the moonlight, deeply resonates with Barry's values regarding his art. Douglas Lilburn (1915–2001), himself a composer, had described an epiphany while travelling on the overnight Wellington to Auckland train, the Limited. At one of the stations, while gazing at Mount Ruapehu in full moonlight, Lilburn realised 'that the world that Mozart lived in was about as remote as the moon, and in no way related to my experience'. He later made a plea for Aotearoa New Zealand to have ‘a music of our own, a living tradition of music created in this country, a music that will satisfy those parts of our being that cannot be satisfied by the music of other nations’. It marked a transition for him from classical forms and instruments to becoming a pioneer of electronic music.
Similarly, Barry's mission was to also develop an indigenous aesthetic, the use of local clays and glazes, local wood firing, and crucially, local forms, or at least an artist's own apprehension and remaking of them. He endlessly researched the history of Aotearoa, culturally, humanly, biologically, and geographically. He sings the landscape and its rough compelling forms in every pot and sculpture he makes.
Thanks to Elizabeth Kerr for some references from her review of the concert in: Five Lines
Thanks to David Craig for references from His Own Steam.
GREGORY O'BRIEN
Greg has played many crucial roles in this project - adviser, narrator, performer, and as a creative producer. He has been a sounding board for ideas as the film's form evolved during the edit.
Greg was a friend of Barry's, and with David Craig wrote His Own Steam: The work of Barry Brickell (2013). He also curated a collection of Barry's writing, A Barry Brickell Reader – Selected ‘wrertings’, meditations, outbursts, decrees and diversions from the founder of Driving Creek Railway. For the concert at the Futuna Chapel Greg narrated fragments of Barry's life and read excerpts of his poetry. For many years Greg has been a friend of Robert Oliver and Andrea Brickell, too, and a big fan of their performances of precolonial music.
Greg is a prolific writer and curator. He is a finalist for the 2024 Ockham Awards with his book about Don Binney, Flight Path. Recently, he curated Always Song in the Water, an exhibition of art of the Pacific, held at the New Zealand Maritime Museum.
BARRY BRICKELL READER:
SELECTED ‘WRERTINGS’, MEDITATIONS, OUTBURSTS, DECREES AND DIVERSIONS
Edited by Gregory O’Brien
Photographs by Haruhiko Sameshima
Afterword by David Craig
Published by Steele Roberts Aotearoa in association with Rim Books.
Available $30 + P&P from Rim Books.
STILLS PHOTOGRAPHY
The film is a dense weave of historical photographs from the extensive Driving Creek archive, photographs by Haru Sameshima from around 2012 and video shot over the last two years.
When Barry Brickell began potting at Coromandel, he became a magnet to artists, including many of our finest documetary photographers. The film is particularly indebted to Gil Hanly and Haru Sameshima, and to the late Marti Friedlander, Ans Westra and Steve Rumsey. Everyone who went to DCR, it seemed, carried a camera. There are numerous photos of anonymous origin, too.
Barry studied geology and was very drawn to the brooding mountains of the North Island Volcanic Plateau. The photograph of Ngauruhoe erupting in 1926 is by Charles Frederick Newham, who also happened to be the cinematographer for this country’s first dramatic feature film, Hinemoana.
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
HARU SAMESHIMA
STEVE RUMSEY (images courtesy Brian Rumsey)
GIL HANLY
MARTI FRIEDLANDER
ANS WESTRA (images courtesy of Suite Tirohanga)
HOWARD WILLIAMS (images courtesy of NZ Railway & Locomotive Society)
LESLIE ADKIN (images courtesy of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa)
CHARLES FREDRICK NEWHAM (image courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library)
W.W. STEWART (images courtesy of NZ Railway & Locomotive Society)
DERECK CROSS (images courtesy of NZ Railway & Locomotive Society)
KELVIN HYNES (images courtesy of Rod McLeod)
ANONYMOUS
MUSIC CREDITS
Fantasia No 3 à 3
Orlando Gibbons
In Nomine à 5
Robert Parsons
In Nomine à 4
Orlando Gibbons
The Image of Melancholy
Antony Holborne
Bonny sweet Robin
Arranged Robert Oliver from Munday
Pavan
Antony Holborne
Puhake ki te Rangi
Gillian Whitehead (2006)
Fortune my foe
Arranged Robert Oliver from Byrd
The Image of Melancholy*
(after Holborne)
Ross Harris (2017)
Fairie Round
Antony Holborne
Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited,
regards the mountains in the moonlight*
Gillian Whitehead (2020)
Browning à 5
Clement Woodcock
Wilsons Wilde
Arranged Robert Oliver
Fantasia No 3 à 3
Orlando Gibbons
Adieu sweet love
Tobias Hume
Ka Waiata
Richard Puanaki
*World premieres