Jack Body
Research Associate Professor of Composition
Professor Jack Body’s research areas include composition, especially cross-cultural composition, New Zealand Music Studies, and ethnomusicology.
Jack Body studied with Ronald Tremain and Robin Maconie at the University of Auckland, before attending courses in Cologne, with Mauricio Kagel, and Utrecht, with Gottfried Michael Koenig. He was a guest lecturer at the the Akademi Musik Indonesia in Yogyakarta (1976-1977). He lectured in the Department of Music at Victoria University of Wellington (now the New Zealand School of Music) from 1980 until his retirement from teaching in 2009.
Jack has composed for most musical genres, including ensemble, vocal, orchestral and electroacoustic music, as well as film, music-theatre and image/sound installations. Significant performances include his opera Alley, an opera in two acts, based on the life of Rewi Alley, and premièred at the 1998 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts. He has been commissioned by leading New Zealand musicians and orchestras, as well as ensembles such as the Atlas Ensemble, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Song Company, and the Kronos Quartet, for whom he has written four works. He has been a featured composer at festivals in Edinburgh (2001), San Francisco (2003), Buenos Aires (2004), Lübeck (2006), Jakarta (2007), Beijing (2008), Cincinnati (2008), and Mexico City/Morelia (2009).
As a promoter of New Zealand music, Jack curated three Sonic Circuses in the 1980s, and three Asia-Pacific Festivals (1984, 1992 and 2007), as well as festivals of New Zealand music at Amsterdam’s IJsbreker, the Arboretum at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and, most recently, at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music (2009). Jack has been the Editor of Waiteata Music Press since 1980, publishing scores and recordings of New Zealand composers. Jack has received three prizes at the Bourges International Competition for Electroacoustic Music (most recently in 2008); his recording Pulse won the 2002 New Zealand Music Award for Best Classical CD, and his soundtrack (with John Gibson) for Vincent Ward’s Rain of the Children won the 2008 Qantas Film and Television Award for Achievement in Original Music in Film. For his services to New Zealand music he has been honoured by both the Composers’ Association of New Zealand and the Lilburn Trust. In 2001 Jack was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to music, photography and education, and in 2004 he received an Arts Foundation Laureate Award.
As an ethnomusicologist, Jack has recorded and documented Indonesian music, in recordings such as Music for Sale: Street Musicians of Yogyakarta (Kiwi-Pacific Records, Original Music) and Jemblung: Sung Narrative Traditions (Pan Records). In 2005 he produced, through Ode Records, South of the Clouds: four CDs of instrumental music of the minorities of Yunnan China, in collaboration with ethnomusicologists Zhang Xingrong (Yunnan Fine Arts Institute) and Helen Rees (UCLA).
As manager of Gamelan Padhang Moncar, Jack has developed new repertoire for Javanese gamelan and other instruments. Collaborating composers and musicians include numerous New Zealand composers as well as Indonesian artists such as Joko Susilo, Budi Putra, Wayan Yudane, Rafiloza bin Rafaii, and kroncong diva Waldjinah.
Jack’s music has been recorded in New Zealand on Atoll, SOUNZfine, Rattle, Trust, Waiteata Music Press, Ode and Kiwi-Pacific Records, and elsewhere on Le Chant Du Monde, IMEB Bourges, Alm Records, OODiscs, Victor Japan, Other Minds, and Peermusic.
Recent composition and entrepreneurial projects included O Cambodia, a collaborative programme with three other composers – Chinary Ung, Him Sophy and Gillian Whitehead – for new works for the NZTrio with three traditional Cambodian musicians. This was presented at the Auckland Arts Festival (March 2011) and at the Eighth International Music Festival, Phnom Penh (September 2011). A CD of Jack’s orchestral works, played by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, wasl recorded in 2011, to be released by Naxos.
Jack is the editor of Waiteata Music Press.
Contact details
phone: +64 4 463 5853
room: 203, 20 Kelburn Parade, Kelburn Campus
email: jack.body@nzsm.ac.nz
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Last Updated:
January 25, 2012
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