Robbie Ellis

Previous Fellow Chris Adams put my name on the door. Ah, bless.

On 1 February 2012 I began my time/term/tenure as Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago.

I ran the numbers a while back looking at the list of all previous Mozart Fellows – at 27 years, 1 month and 19 days, I am the second youngest to take up the position. That’s cool.

Rather awesomely, I get my own office. In contrast to Radio New Zealand House in Wellington, you can actually open the windows and have contact with fresh, outside air. In fact, there are eight such openable windows. Rest assured, I can close them when it gets cold in winter.

My swipe card doesn’t seem to work yet… slightly concerning. That could require repeated phone calls. I hope not.

So what am I going to work on? Gigs and pieces!

Gigs:

- Song Sale. Monthly gigs where a collection of songwriter-performers is on call to compose brand new songs, commissioned by audience members on their chosen themes/topics/genres etc. First gig is Monday 13 February 2012 at The Church, 50 Dundas St. Tomorrow night, we Song Salers have a meeting/test session.

- Zomburlesque. We did the show in Wellington, the Dunedin Fringe saw the review, they offered assistance in doing another production, and it’s happening. The core crew and performers are coming from Wellington; I’m co-ordinating the venue, the tech and the band in Dunedin. The first season was one of the most fun shows I’ve ever done; I anticipate the Dunedin season being the same.

Pieces:

- Reworking the 3rd movement of Three Sibilants for Eb clarinet for violin and beatbox. The violinist is Sarah Claman, the beatboxer is me. This will be performed at a Chamber Vulgarus gig in early March. You can hear the movement from 7:42 in the below SoundCloud embed:

Three Sibilants for Eb clarinet by Robbie Ellis on SoundCloud.

- A 4-5 minuter for the St Peter’s & St Mary’s Sinfonia, the senior orchestra of two Auckland Catholic high schools combined. Their conductor Antun Poljanich arranged to commission me. It’s going to be a bit of a percussion feature – I get three percussionists plus a timps player and a pianist. This’ll be in their 2012 repertoire, including at ASSBOF. (KBB Music has had naming rights on the event since 2002, but old high school habits die hard.)

- Something super secret squirrel which I will blog about in more detail later on.

- Something for Saxcess, New Zealand’s oldest saxophone quartet. Debbie Rawson has been great at getting my name out there as a composer, so I wanted to use the Fellowship to write something for her. Saxcess is doing a tour for their 20th anniversary, under Chamber Music New Zealand’s Encompass series. They’re hitting a motley collection of towns in June & July, including Cromwell (the closest to Dunedin).

- Something for the Estrella Quartet – four players, eight hands, two pianos. They’re all students at the University of Auckland under the tutelage of Stephen De Pledge, who contacted me about a piece. They won the 2011 Royal Overseas League Chamber Music Scholarship, which means they go to the UK in July/August to see a bunch of concerts, play a bunch of gigs (including at the Edinburgh Fringe). I’m thinking of calling my piece The Piano Tuner’s Performance Appraisal.

- A new piece for Auckland Youth Orchestra, an ensemble I played double bass in from 2003 to 2005. I’m currently reading Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (my neighbour is a Masters student in Psychology and she regards Sacks’ writing as pop psych, but at least I can understand it). There’s a story about what sounds Robert Schumann was hallucinating near the end of his life… there could be something in that. This is for their September & October tour, with rehearsals beginning in early August.

I arrived in Dunedin just over eight hours ago. Chronology of my week:

• Tue 10: the last time presenting Sound Lounge.
• Wed 11: my last day at work for Radio New Zealand Concert; after-work drinks.
• Thu 12: packed up all my belongings in my flat in Wellington; parents flew into town.
• Fri 13: movers arrived to take half of the belongings in a truck; big karaoke-filled farewell party at The Fringe Bar (with a superbly varied cross-section of Wellingtonians)
• Sat 14: tetrised the remainder of my belongings into my car; sailed from Wellington to Picton; stayed overnight in Kaikoura.
• Sun 15: drove from Kaikoura to Dunedin; stopped in Christchurch to walk the perimeter of the Red Zone (more on that later); unpacked my stuff into my new flat.

I have a lawn.

In true awesome Dunedin fashion, my wall-mate (i.e. I’m in 12A, she’s in 12B) helped me unload a car’s worth of stuff, suggested the best Indian restaurant in town (Little India, 308 Moray Pl, for the record) and gave me a brief tiki-tour of the university campus.

After that, I’ve taken the chance to unpack and find a home for many items. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s coming along. Amusingly, the best place to store my musical instruments is in the kitchen. This beat is cookin’.

Also, I have a lawn.

And I’m missing an office chair. My acquired-from-previous-tenant desk is pretty useless without something to sit on – should have thought of that maybe.

Also, I know it’s supposed to be the middle of summer, but I’m regretting sending my two heaters with the movers instead of packing one in the car. If this is the middle of summer…

I’m sitting in Dunedin Airport waiting for the 1710 to Auckland. Time for a quick blog update…

Early yesterday morning I flew from Wellington (current home) to Dunedin (next year’s home). This is my first time in Dunedin as an adult – growing up in Auckland, the only time our family made it this far south was on The Big South Island Trip one summer. (In the words of my mother: “You’re growing up in Auckland and you won’t be a real Kiwi unless you’ve seen the South Island!”)

Picking up a rental car at the airport, my first stop was Black/Sale House, HQ of the University of Otago Department of Music. I had a good chat with Dr Anthony Ritchie, the only Otago staff member I really knew prior to my appointment as 2012 Mozart Fellow. We talked about plans for the Fellowship – I’ll do a little bit of teaching, some tutoring, and some supervision of undergraduate work. All promising.

At a morning tea I met the Department staff – the academics and the admin. I also said hello to Chris Adams, the current Mozart Fellow.

Then the flat-hunt began. I’d set up 10 viewings for between midday at 6:30pm yesterday. Two were promising, and as it happens I got one of them – a nice little cosy 1-bedroom on the sunny slopes of North East Valley (it’s practically Opoho).

On a bit of a stroll around town, I popped into Twang Town on Moray Pl, a music shop specialising in string instruments. The independent owner-operator style reminded me of Alistair’s Music on Cuba St – I’ll happily take my guitar or bass there once I move. The proprietor, Hyram Ballard, is a good dude and recommended “the best coffee in Dunedin” at Mazagran across the road. It was pretty damn good coffee.

On the venues front, I popped my head into the Fortune Theatre; saw a student recital at Marama Hall on campus; had dinner and saw an amazing Celtic chamber ensemble at The Church (where this performance of my piece Ha! took place); and took a tour around Sammy’s with the owner, Sam Chin. It’s a grand old proscenium arch theatre which has variously been a brewery warehouse, a nightclub, and a big music gig venue. We’re in talks about bringing a show there for the Dunedin Fringe Festival… can’t say much more than that now but it looks exciting.

First boarding call for my flight so I’ll sign off now.

My life is going to be exactly like this movie.

I am the 2012 University of Otago Mozart Fellow.

The Division of Humanities phoned me at work nearly four weeks ago to tell me the news – that phone call is what I like to call “The Ring of the Fellowship”. I’ve kept it secret (from most people) since then, although someone actually managed to guess the truth last night.

The University Council this afternoon approved the appointment of me and three other Fellows – poet & novelist Emma Neale; artist Nick Austin and children’s writer & poet James Norcliffe (media release).

To all the people who I’ve told “I’m going overseas next year”, I didn’t lie to you. The South Island is, strictly speaking, overseas.

What does holding the Mozart Fellowship mean?

• I am currently seriously stoked.
• From 1 February 2012 to 31 January 2013, I will be a composer on a salary.
• I will live in Dunedin, New Zealand and be attached to the University of Otago Department of Music.
• My responsibilities are to compose, create new art, and generally hang out in Dunedin and be awesome.

The current Fellow is a good fellow, Chris Adams. He and I are both graduates of the University of Auckland School of Music, and our works have often been featured in the same concerts (like the one at 9pm on Tuesday next week.) Since nobody may hold the Fellowship for more than two years, he has to move on. This means I can move on in.

I’ve got two announcements to make:

I will be in Dunedin from Wed 19 to Fri 21 October. My priority on this trip is finding a place to live, but I’ll have time to do other stuff. If you are someone in the Dunedin cultural scene and you think we should meet, then please get in touch.

I am looking for people to write for. Already I’ve got plenty of plans (for instance, my big project will be to create a piece of music theatre and make it ready for production), but few commitments fixed in stone. If you or your group want me to write something for you, I want to hear your ideas.

My email address is robbieatrobbiedotcodoten-zed.

Woohoo! Now I can stop deceiving people! And finish producing this weekend’s programme for The Critic’s Chair down in Prod C.