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In the same week as Recorded Music NZ recognises musicians with the New Zealand Music Awards, Resound, a key project of SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music, is celebrating five years of documenting NZ art music.

The project, which is funded by NZ On Air and delivered by SOUNZ in partnership with Radio New Zealand Concert, is the first of its kind in documenting NZ art music by filming and audio recording existing and new works.

“The Resound project is important to our culture and identity as New Zealanders. It has revitalised and grown an important collection of NZ art music both in sound recordings and on video that will be cherished into the future. We congratulate the team on their excellent work over the past five years,” said NZ On Air Chief Executive Jane Wrightson.

SOUNZ hosted a special event in celebration of the Resound project on 17 November, at Ng? Taonga Sound & Vision in Wellington. The event was attended by industry guests, SOUNZ’s funders, NZ composers, musicians and other friends of the organisation.

Hon Maggie Barry ONZM, Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, sent SOUNZ a congratulation message to celebrate the achievements of the Resound project:
“While I am unable to be with you today, to celebrate this significant milestone, I want to congratulate you and acknowledge your work and achievements through the excellent Resound Project. With the help of NZ On Air and RNZ Concert, Resound has established an important new resource -- I am encouraged to see cultural organisations working together, crossing boundaries between the arts, heritage and broadcasting to deliver great results.”

During the evening the following Resound films were screened and introduced by Kate Mead, presenter of RNZ Concert’s Sound Lounge:
Jack Body: The Street Where I Live
Eve de Castro-Robinson: The glittering hosts of heaven (excerpt)
Ross Harris, Vincent O'Sullivan and Horomona Horo: Requiem for the Fallen (excerpt)
Anthony Ritchie: Lullabies (excerpt)
Karlo Margeti?: Lightbox

The achievements of Resound project speak for themselves: so far there are 510 works available to listen, 350 works by 90 composers have been filmed and 75 documentaries and interviews created.

SOUNZ Executive Director Diana Marsh said, "SOUNZ is proud to be part of such an important project, creating a resource of NZ music for us and the future generations to enjoy and learn from. We are very privileged to be able to work with NZ On Air, RNZ Concert, other music organisations, presenters, musicians and of course NZ composers around the country, in putting together these films and recordings. SOUNZ would like to extend our gratitude and congratulations to all of those, who have helped to make this happen over the past five years.”

The Resound project consists of three phases:
Phase 1: Relicensing, auditioning and re-broadcast of recordings of works held in the RNZ Concert New Zealand Composer Archive.
Phase 2: Re-recording of works considered by the panel (through Phase 1) to be of artistic merit but where existing recordings were found to be unsuitable for broadcast.
Phase 2.0: Performances of significant New Zealand works are captured on film.

Resound Project Manager Chris Watson, who has been involved since the start of the project, said, “Resound is a visionary undertaking, bringing archived and previously inaccessible audio recordings back into the public domain, making new reference recordings of 'lost' New Zealand music and, more latterly, systematically documenting on film performances of music composed by New Zealanders.”

Anyone can explore the Resound resources by listening and viewing the free content on SOUNZ’s website www.sounz.org.nz, where a weekly staff pick, the Resound Audio of the Week, is also published. In addition, RNZ Concert presents a selection of the recordings from their archives on Fridays at 7pm.

ends.