The Journey of Matuku Moana
- Instrumentation
- Cello
- Composed
- 1992
- Duration
- 18'
- Publisher
- SOUNZ
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About this piece
Matuku moana is the Māori name of the white-faced heron. Whitehead wrote most of the piece in Sydney while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, with a large wooden heron in her room, and finished it in New Zealand where herons fed on the mudflats outside her house. The work is built on the idea of the double, with initial ideas recycled and condensed, and the calls of the Australian currawong and the New Zealand korimako (bellbird) recur throughout. Georg Pedersen's recording was later used in Gaylene Preston's film Titless Wonders.
Technical overview
No technical overview is available yet.