Anna Rugis: Island Dreams
Written by
By Liz Nevill
Singer, poet, composer, songwriter and committed environmentalist, Anna Rugis has released the CD of her latest choir musical for schools. Island Dreams is a musical adventure telling the heartwarming story of how New Zealand endangered species found sanctuary on our pest free islands. By Liz Nevill
Singer, poet, composer, songwriter and committed environmentalist, Anna Rugis has released the CD of her latest choir musical for schools. Island Dreams is a musical adventure telling the heartwarming story of how New Zealand endangered species found sanctuary on our pest free islands.Island Dreams is the first of Rugis' environmental school compositions to be created for intermediate school children. Her previous composition Home Free, released in 2005, is written to appeal to slightly younger children and a number of New Zealand Primary Schools have already performed it as a school production. Using catchy tunes, lively rhythms and poetic language Home Free relates the adventures of a family of tuis as they search Aotearoa for a new home. During their journey they encounter and learn about environmental problems affecting the land.
Home Free is to be the centrepiece of a three day eco-arts festival - bigTree@ Te Puru - being staged at the Te Puru Community Centre in Beachlands, a coastal community in Manukau City. Anna Rugis herself lives in Maraetai, her home tucked away in native bush and home also to many of the birds that win parts in her songs and stories.
Eighty children drawn from local primary schools will raise their voices in unison to sing the Home Free songs that paint a picture of the New Zealand bush, beaches and cities the tuis visit in their odyssey. Rugis extends her role as writer and composer of Home Free for the Te Puru performance. She is helping with costumes and props, assisting the choir teachers by singing with the children at their rehearsals and will sing lead for one of the songs.
Rugis will release River Songs, her third environmental musical early next year. Again musically crafted to attract the interest of intermediate school children Rugis describes River Songs as slightly more music heavy in a choral sense than its predecessors.
"Riversongs is based on the life of rivers and the creatures who live in them," she says. "It's perfect for schools having a capable choir and might be able to be performed at a choir festival say, where different schools take a song each and put it all together 'on the night' so to speak. It has a bit less emphasis on an acted story. You might say I have invented a form called a 'choir musical' by writing songs which deliver the narrative equally with the script which is more a series of linking skits."
In addition to her environmental musicals for schools Rugis has recorded three CDs of original songs, Reconciliation in 1998, Cavesongs in 2004 and her just released Traffic in Gold which she describes as contemporary Port a' Bial music. In this collection, which includes some traditional songs, she has resurrected this ancient folk music of the Hebridean Islands off the coast of Scotland.
Currently Rugis is performing live in Chanson, a musical play written by her which tells the true story of fellow performer in the show, singer songwriter, Linn Lorkin. The musical tracks Lorkin's metamorphoses from PhD student at the Sorbonne in Paris to New Zealand's most popular chanteuse. Chanson features original songs by both Rugis and Larkin, gorgeous Parisian gowns and Hershal Herscher, a New York born Latin keyboardist, who for this show displays his talent on accordion as he plays the haunting tunes of Paris cafe society.
Rugis started singing when she was five. It was her chore to trudge the boundaries of the family sheep farm in Pokeno to drag out any sheep caught in the gorse. Like shepherds in ancient times she sang to the landscape. And, although Rugis qualified as a draftswomen, the first female student in New Zealand allowed tostudy tech drawing at High School, she held fast to her dream of becoming a professional singer. Success in New Zealand led to her taking her vocal talents to London where she won recognition becoming a backup singer for Van Morrison, The Kinks, Cat Stevens and Cliff Richard and sharing with them their experiences on the road.
In 2001, accompanied by her American sound engineer husband Rugis returned home to New Zealand - but not for the quiet life. Her days are a whirlwind of composing, producing, recording and performing. Yet repose for her is at her doorstep. Here weeding in the native bush she champions so strongly she finds inspiration for the engaging and uplifting music she writes for tomorrows defenders of our natural inheritance.
More information
21/08/08