With rapturous applause
Gisborne-born soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, 64, “came, sang and conquered” with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a Ravinia gala benefit concert. Looking every inch the beauteous diva in a stunning red-and-black ensemble, Te…
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Introducing Tauwhitu
In a Kerikeri pub sometime in the 1980s, Boston author Christina Thompson met a group of Maori having pints after a day spent diving for crayfish and uses this first encounter with native New…
A thirty year legacy
New Zealand drama teacher Ken Rea – who trained at Auckland’s Gil Cornwall academy and worked at Downstage and the Mercury Theatre – was honoured at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama for…
In love with Demant
Whakatane artist Rozi Demant has her international debut exhibition with ‘Lovebirds’ at Santa Monica’s Tarryn Teresa Gallery. Demant, who holds the rare and enviable position of having produced five sold-out solo exhibitions before reaching…
Underwear wanderings
Christchurch travel writer and columnist Joe Bennett’s quest to find the origins of his five-pack of Chinese-manufactured underpants, took him to a remote western corner of China and the cotton fields of Xinjiang. Bennett’s…
Art’s urban sprawl
Christchurch hosts art biennale SCAPE 2008, a city-wide exhibition of new work by New Zealand and international artists all exploring the concept of cities as spaces reflective of social change, “constantly in flux.”…
With Unstudied Grace
New Zealand actor Jonno Roberts has the role of Stanley Kowalski in a Seattle production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It may seem a strange quirk, that someone from New Zealand has been given…
Vocal ambassador
Christchurch soprano Hayley Westenra, 21, performed with the US National Symphony Orchestra at the 28th annual broadcast of America’s popular 4th of July concert, Capitol Fourth before returning to the UK to continue a…
Piercing Revelation
Janet Frame’s 1963 novel, Towards Another Summer, written in London and first published posthumously in New Zealand in 2007, is considered by Guardian reviewer Rachel Cooke. Towards Another Summer is based on a weekend…
Venice bound
Christchurch sculptor Francis Upritchard and Auckland painter and teacher Judy Millar will represent New Zealand in a six-month exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Upritchard is known for her hand-made figures inspired by the…
Spoilt for shenanigans
Wellington’s Bret McKenzie likes Los Angeles eatery Pie n’ Burger because “the name lets you know what you’re going to get. No surprises.” This is one of a sampling of places McKenzie recommends in…
Synthesised on Flying Nun
Lead singer of Wellington band the Phoenix Foundation, Samuel Flynn Scott released his debut album The Hunt Brings Us Life in 2006 but continues to work with the Foundation which recently promoted their latest…
Taranaki has Guests
Since 2003, thousands have converged on New Plymouth’s Pukekura Park in March for three-day international music festival WOMAD, which from this year becomes an annual event. WOMAD 2008 featured over 300 performers from 14…
Hatched on a poultry farm
Author Joy Cowley’s novel Chicken Feathers is reviewed this month in The Boston Globe, her storytelling described as “effortless mastery”. Sweden had Astrid Lindgren, and France its Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Each great writer possesses…
Shocking Advance
Auckland pop band the Shocking Pinks have signed a four-album deal with New York label DFA Records, which also represents LCD Soundsystem and Hercules & Love Affair. Founder and ex-Brunettes member, Nick Harte says…
Drawing Comparisons
Masterton-born indie pop rocker Pip Brown, 28, otherwise known as Ladyhawke, is garnering enthusiastic reviews in London – the Guardian dubbing Brown’s sound “exquisitely distracted insouciance over fabulous machine melody.” Her second release ‘Paris…
NZ Cinema in Beijing
The 2008 New Zealand Film Festival opens in Beijing and includes screenings of Eagle vs Shark, No. 2 and Out of the Blue. The Festival is a means of offering Chinese…
Union Man’s Aria
Christchurch-born singer Max Merritt, who fronted Max Merritt and the Meteors, will be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame alongside New Zealand band Dragon. “I didn’t expect it – it was an incredible…
Ward and Puhi reunite
Director Vincent Ward, 52, has been in Sydney at the world premiere of his latest feature Rain of the Children, a film which documents the life of Tuhoe woman, Te Puhi who Ward met…
Sausage Day cinema
Janet Frame was a waitress at Dunedin’s Grand Hotel when she wrote A Night at the Opera, until now unknown, thought to be written in 1954, and this month published in the latest issue…
Changeably Crowe
This is New Zealand actor Russell Crowe on the cover of the June issue of PhotoIcon in “typical mercurial and irreverent mood”. Taken by British portrait photographer Michael Birt in February 2000 at a…
Short lines hide
Wellington poet Bill Manhire takes the cover of the 2008 spring edition of literary periodical Poetry London, in which his poems ‘Song with a Chorus’, ‘Velvet’ and ‘The Carpe Diem Poem’ appear. Manhire read…
Hobbiton revisited
New Zealand is once again the backdrop for Middle Earth, Peter Jackson and Hobbit director Guillermo Del Toro confirmed in an hour-long live internet chat with fans. Speaking from New Zealand and London respectively,…
Constantly Gardening
Auckland greensman Robbie Penny has worked on Bridge to Terabithia, 10,000 BC and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian arranging on-set nurseries, sourcing Belgian lettuce ferns and relocating apple orchards. Feet are…
Colonial Space Rockets
First published in New Zealand in 1881, the second volume of science fiction novella The Great Romance lay hidden on the shelves of Dunedin’s Hocken Library until the 1990s when the work was discovered….
Finding Precious
Tauranga-based filmmakers Lance and James Morcan are searching for the best person to take on the role of four-foot-nine power-lifting champion Precious McKenzie. Ranked the best weightlifter in South Africa, McKenzie, now 71, was…
London from home
New Zealand author Emily Perkins leans out to close a window at her publisher’s in Soho and “raising her voice over a building site, takes a deep breath of London air to say, ‘It’s…
NZ Pop’s Work Permit
Auckland band Ruby Suns has the UK press “salivating” over its latest guitar-pop album Sea Lion, with other acts like the Brunettes, Connan and the Mockasins and Lawrence of Arabia proving…
Royal Interlude
Filmmaker Andrew Adamson’s Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, shot in New Zealand, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, has been released worldwide. The release comes just before Adamson takes a break from what has been…
Weathering the Storm
Rotorua-born and Ruatoria-raised political campaigner and artist Tame Iti has the leading role in a Europe-bound performance based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Iti will perform in Tempest II with the 15-member Mau Dance Company….
Comedic Eclecticism
Flight of the Conchords have “a gift of genre-blending that makes even David Bowie’s efforts pale in comparison,” writes London Time Out. Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie shift comfortably from the soft-hitting hipn hop…
Debating the Warrior Gene
The Mongrel Mob feature in an episode of BAFTA award-winning BBC documentary Ross Kemp on Gangs, in which Kemp explores the history of the gang, formed in Hastings in the 1960s. He follows members…
Singer Performs on Ice
New Zealand singer/songwriter, Mihirangi has returned from a trip to Antarctica where she filmed a video for her latest single No War. “They put me on this iceberg all by myself!” she said. “It…
Paquin in beautiful 100
Academy-Award winner Anna Paquin, 25, features on US Men’s magazine Maxim’s 2008 Hot 100, the “ultimate list of the world’s most beautiful women.” At number 50, Paquin is described as the: “sexy, troubled, and…
Autumn and Rainbows
From Takaka, Telegraph foreign correspondent Peter Foster writes a weekly blog on life in the small South Island town, population: 1,182. Foster was the Telegraph’s South Asia Correspondent for four years until January 2008…
New leathers for Lawless
Lucy Lawless, has been both trawling the back streets of West Hollywood for replacement leather chaps and performing at the Carling Academy in Islington, London. The lesbian icon, just turned 40, talks to Time…
Great spirit returns
New Zealand’s favourite wizard, Sir Ian McKellen will return to the country to reprise his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit. McKellen had told Empire before he was…
Pastoral in pieces
Auckland pebble mosaic artist John Botica has created what is considered, in the specialist publication Mosaic Art Now, one of the world’s top 100 contemporary mosaic works. Botica’s ‘Tree of Life’ was commissioned by…
Outfoxing furniture
The small town of Pokeno in Franklin district, Auckland is behind ex-Thompson Twin Alannah Currie’s latest artistic foray, a display of surreal furniture on show at London’s Ragged School. Under the moniker Miss Pokeno,…
Two Hobbits of a Kind
Peter Jackson is joining forces with Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro to make the two back-to-back film adaptations of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Jackson will co-produce the film with fellow director Fran…
From a Common Ancestor
Auckland Museum’s “most ambitious” travelling exhibition Vaka Moana – Voyages of the Ancestors is currently at Taiwan’s National Museum of Prehistory and the National Museum of Natural Science. University professor and editor of the…
Lange’s Working Class
Pioneering filmmaker New Zealander Darcy Lange’s work screened in New York’s Lehmann Maupin gallery as part of group show, You & Me, Sometimes… A “textured” and “cool” show according to The New…
Island Calling at Festival
New Zealand filmmaker Annie Goldson’s An Island Calling, featured at the Canadian International Documentary Festival, explores Fiji’s infamous 2001 murders of Red Cross boss John Scott and his partner. “The facts are known about…
Scaling the Opera Ladder
New Zealand tenor Geoffrey Knight is a versatile individual, a former member of motorbike gang Highway 61, a stuntman, actor and deep sea trawlerman, Knight is currently performing Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta Utopia Limited…
Lucky Dagg at the Logies
Comedian and writer John Clarke, born in Palmerston North and famous for creating the “elegantly dressed” farmer Fred Dagg and his seven sons, all Trevors, will be inducted into the Australian Logies Hall of…
Art of Ice
New Zealand artist David Trubridge features at San Francisco’s Natural World Museum in an exhibition entitled Melting Ice: A Hot Topic, which addresses the theme of climate change from a global perspective. Trubridge’s…
Dame Kiri’s festival circuit
Soprano Dame Kiri te Kanawa is to perform at three North American summer music festivals – Washington D.C.’s Wolf Trap, Chicago’s Ravinia and the famous Ontario Elora Festival on July 13. Elora artistic director…
Rogue takes orders
Wellington actress Anna Paquin, 25, will star as Sookie Stackhouse in HBO drama True Blood, to air in the US in September. Paquin, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Jane…
Rose’s Web Comeback
Mt Maunganui former lonelygirl15, Jessica Rose, returns soon to Web-only-TV in a US-made horror-thriller Blood Cell. The show follows Rose’s character, Julia, as she contends with an unseen murderer who will talk to her…
Peter Jackson step aside
Christchurch video production company Gorilla Pictures is making a zombie film “better than most indie stuff cranked out on the cheap” in the US, according to horror film aficionados Dread Central. Director Logan…
Taylor-made for Shortlives
Richard Taylor’s animated children’s programme Jane and the Dragon now airs in the US every Sunday afternoon on NBC. Jane and the Dragon is created from drawings so detailed they required even more…
Dispelling the Myths
Black Grace is in Aspen where founder and artistic Neil Ieremia is helping the American public come to grips with a dance company “from a place not especially known for dance.” Ieremia has…
Sound System Men
Hamilton reggae group Katchafire are touring the US “spreading their Aotearoa Roots” to big crowds from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Hawaii, where the band headlines at the One Love Reggae Festival. Lead singer Logan…
Sydney Sees Red
Established in 1953, the Royal New Zealand Ballet had humble beginnings, performing nationwide with a company of three and a pianist. Now 32-strong, and with an international reputation to boot, the RNZB…
Lightning Success
Liam Finn is currently touring the United States promoting his 2007 solo album I’ll Be Lightning, and is mesmerising critics there. In Texas, former Dirty Vegas frontman, Steve Smith was impressed with how Finn…
In London cinemas
Duncan Sarkies’ 2006 movie Out of the Blue – a dramatic reconstruction of the 1990 Aramoana massacre – is showing in London this week and continues to receive favourable reviews. The Guardian…
