Alchemy & Annunciations
Join us on 9 May for a celebration of new music and poetry. Alchemy & Annunciations is our first collaboration with Featherston Booktown.
For this fabulous session, composer Eve de Castro Robinson and poet Nick Ascroft are writing a new work which Eve describes as ‘intense’, ‘zany’ and ‘madcap’.
You’ll hear the premiere performed by soprano Barbara Paterson and marimba specialist Yoshiko Tsuruta. And there will be conversation with Dave Armstrong – brother of our esteemed Artistic Director Donald Armstrong and a fine purveyor of words and music himself. Eve and Nick will discuss their creation and the wild alchemy of collaboration!
We’re proud to be supporting this event together with Bill Falconer CNZM.
Saturday 9 May, 2.30pm-3.25pm
Featherston School Hall, Lyons Street, Featherston
Tickets – $30 from Eventfinda.
About the creators
Eve de Castro Robinson
Award-winning composer Dr Eve de Castro-Robinson retired as Associate Professor in Composition at University of Auckland in 2019 and is a freelance composer, writer, and speaker. Her work is performed internationally, and she has held residencies with the Auckland Philharmonia, Orchestra Wellington, AWE Festival, Atlantic Centre for the Arts Florida, Banff Centre Canada, and Brisons Veor in Cornwall UK.
In 2026 Eve is Lilburn Composer in Residence in Wellington. As an artist her inspiration is drawn from a wide range of sources, monks to Meredith Monk, birdsong to The Byrds, hymns, 70s art rock, sonic art, poetry, auteur cinema, abstract painting, contemporary jazz and dance, camera art, and many more influences are given a whirl in the creative blender. Her output ranges from collaborative performance works to instrumental, vocal and chamber music and large-scale orchestral canvases as well as a 90-minute chamber opera on Len Lye. She has six solo CDs, and works with Rattle Records, with whose The Gristle of Knuckles she won 2018 Best Classical Artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards.
Interview with Eve de Castro Robinson – Martinborough Star
Eve de Castro Robinson – SOUNZ
Nick Ascroft
Nick Ascroft has published 6 collections of poetry, his latest It’s What He Would’ve Wanted (THWUP 2025) featured in the best-of-the-year lists of the Listener, the Post and (with himself the judge) Newsroom.
He is a jersey-wearing gen-Xer born in Oamaru. Nick writes about the embarrassment of the human condition, from the intersection of comedy and poetry. Not the kind of comedian to laugh at the absurdity of life, he jokes instead to throw a blanket over the terror. The terror’s shape remains visible, but it will not harsh our mellow.
About the moderator and performers
Dave Armstrong
Dave is one of New Zealand’s best-known playwrights. His plays include Niu Sila (with Oscar Kightley) The Tutor, Le Sud, King and Country, Rita and Douglas, The Motor Camp and In Bed with Schoenberg. Dave wrote the libretto for the children’s opera Kia Ora Khalid (composer Gareth Farr), and co-wrote the children’s movie, Kiwi Christmas. His TV credits include Skitz, The Semisis, Spin Doctors, Spies and Lies, Billy (co-written with Briar Grace-Smith), Shortland Street, Hope and Wire (co-written with Dame Gaylene Preston), Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby (co-creator and co-writer) and Friend of the Friendless.
Dave teaches a television writing course at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and is a regular weekly columnist for The Post newspaper.
Dave Armstrong – Armstrong Creative
Barbara Paterson
Soprano Barbara Paterson returned to Aotearoa-NZ from New York City in 2016, having worked steadily as an opera and concert singer across the USA for several years. Since returning to NZ, Barbara has sung for Stroma, Java Dance, Orchestra Wellington, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, the CANZ annual Nelson workshops, the SMP Ensemble, The Queen’s Closet, Wanderlust Theatre, NZ Opera, the Audio Foundation, the Auckland Chamber Orchestra, Unstuck Opera, Eternity Opera, NIMBY Opera, CubaDupa, Avenue Opera, the Metamorphosis Artists, and as a soloist for choral societies around NZ.
Barbara can be heard as a soloist on Stephen Gallagher’s acclaimed soundtrack for the 2024 anime film, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. She was a 2020 Freemasons Resident Artist and a 2007-2008 Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artist for NZ Opera.
Yoshiko Tsuruta
Japanese born percussionist Yoshiko Tsuruta is one of the very few dedicated marimba players in New Zealand and performs and tours with various artists throughout the country. Her repertoire includes new music from various composers and her own arrangements, with which she explores the expressive possibilities of the marimba beyond the stereotype as a percussion instrument. She has been soloist in a number of marimba concertos including by Gareth Farr and John Psathas.
Yoshiko is a graduate of the NZSM in Wellington and the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Austria, where she completed her Master’s Degree (1st Class) in percussion performance. She has won prizes in several competitions, including Australian marimba competition, Gisborne International Music Competition and the NZ National Concerto Competition.