Rob Thorne, M.A. (Ngāti Tumutumu)
Composer, Performer, Improvisor, Collaborator, Anthropologist, Specialist
New Zealand Māori composer, performer, improvisor, collaborator, anthropologist and specialist Rob Thorne M.A. (Ngāti Tumutumu) is a diverse and original explorer in the evolving journey of Taonga Puoro (traditional Māori instruments), fusing these ancient voices with modern sounds and technology. His debut solo album Whaia te Maramatanga (Rattle Records) is a deeply felt and highly concentrated conversation between the past and the present - a musical passage of identity and connection.
Using modern looping technology and traditional Māori flutes and horns made from stone, bone, shell and wood, Rob creates a transcendent aural experience that touches the soul with timeless beauty. Every performance of "Whāia te Māramatanga" is a stunning and very personal exploration of the spiritual and healing qualities of an ancient practise.
Rob’s combined musical and academic experience and skills are multitudinal. A musician with over 25 years performance experience in bands and solo, predominantly within alternative rock, free noise, experimental, and improvisational sound art, his work since 2001 with traditional Māori musical instruments (taonga puoro) has seen him complete an MA in Social Anthropology, and since 2008, incorporate this diverse experience to create long, beautifully transcendent, ambient compositions using loops, intelligently blending the modern with the ancient: a format that is now being picked up and utilised by many taonga puoro players.
His journey of identity has seen him travel the country to research museum collections, teach and lecture, present as keynote, demonstrate, collaborate and perform, working academically and musically with both traditional and sonic masters including Richard Nunns and Phil Dadson. His Post Graduate Diploma research became a museum exhibition "Kōauau: The Music Within", which successfully toured New Zealand regionally for 5 years and awoke many to the natural ease with which the instruments can be made and played.
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Throughout 2019, with a show devised by Thorne and Orchestra Wellington and written by Dave Armstrong, Rob delivered over 50 free concerts with Orchestra Wellington in their small ensemble Concerts for Schools program that was experienced by nearly 10,000 school children in the greater Wellington area. In January he worked in the Wellington Gardens Magic Concert Series, premiering iHi, a new work for taonga puoro and percussion with Hannah Neman, he performed solo, and briefly collaborated with Kuki Koori, while also providing a live site-specific performance installation under the trees in the gardens after the concerts. He then travelled as a guest of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra to perform in the US premiere of He Pūtōrino He Mākūtu with Celeste Oram. On Waitangi Day he performed Te Ao Hou again with the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson, and later in February was invited to participate in a hothouse Residency on Climate Change & Art with the Goethe Institute. In March he was invited to present a Compser’s Talk at the NZ School of Music, and he performed collaborativley with Lucien Johnson, Thomas Voyce, Amy Jean Barnett and Dugal McKinnon in the Passages exhibition project at The Adam Gallery. In June he performed as part of the Wellington City ReCut Concert Series alongside Anthonie Tonnon and Monique Lapins and in the Wellington Matariki celebrations Te Ahi Kā Festival he performed solo on the ‘diving board’ of Te Papa Museum, performed iHi with Hannah Neman and was commissioned for a second year of sonic installations, both solo and with Fis, while also having work included into the WCC Matariki pyrotechnic-display soundtrack curated by David Downes. In August he performed with the STROMA Ensemble in the NZ premiere of He Pūtōrino He Mākūtu - The Overture and collaborated live with Keir GoGwilt & Glen Downie. He played the Christchurch Arts Festival with Fis, and then delivered taonga puoro performance workshops to over 15 schools for the Hawkes Bay Youth Festival. In September Rob had his first ever original film score composition go viral in Super Special, directed by Ashley Williams, with over half a million views in its first week online. Rob also worked as a cultural consultant on this project, helping to ensure the work’s process and outcomes maintained an authenticity and relevance. Later that month he participated as a mentor in the RAW! Kings High School Arts Festival programme in Dunedin, finishing off the month in a small live collaboration with drummer Myele Manzanza and The Arthur Street Loft Orchestra. In October he collaborated in a live-score project for the classic 1928 kiwi silent-film Te Kooti Trail with an ensemble led by Elliot Vaughan and including Simon Eastwood, Hannah Neman and Naoto Segawa that was performed in the stunning Roxy Cinema in Miramar, Wellington, and then flew to Tampere, Finland to attend WOMEX’19. While there he recorded twice with David Rothenberg and Anna Falt, the second session being with WOMEX Radio. Travelling over land and sea from Finland to Germany, he premiered the REWA project with Tania Giannouli on the live stage in early November at Enjoy Jazz Festival in Ludwigshafen to standing ovations and two encores, and immediately after the duo collaborated with Maryanne Piper as part of her Aurora Winds project in Köln. Returning home, Rob then performed his commissioned world premiere of Ko Tō Manawa ko Tōku, Puritia - Your Heart Is My Heart,Take Hold with Orchestra Wellington and Tristan Dingemans. To finish off the year and bring in the next, Rob travelled to Golden Bay for Twisted Frequency Festival to perform, collaborate and host workshops.
Commissioned for 2018 by the New Zealand String Quartet to write a new collaborative work with taonga puoro, and by the New Zealand Festival to devise a show, he composed Tomokanga, a ten minute piece for pukaea, putorino, putatara and string quartet which was premiered in early March ’18 by the NZF to a full house at the stunning St Mary of the Angels Cathedral. Te Ao Hou, a concerto styled show also included works by composers Gillian Whitehead, Gareth Farr and Salina Fisher, and poetry by Maori language expert Dr. Vincent Olsen-Reeder.
Fis and Rob Thorne were invited to showcase at SXSW Festival 2018 in Texas and In April, Rob collaborated with Austrian sonic pioneer Elisabeth Schimana in her renowned Virus project, before completing his year long residency at NZSM/Victoria University in June, when he released the highly anticipated album Rewa on Rattle Records that was recorded with Tania Giannouli in Athens, 2017. In July he traveled to Germany & the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music to perform in the mammoth 3-hour commissioned show Tautitotito with New Zealand composers Celeste Oram and Alex Taylor, then returned home hurriedly to present at Ted-X in New Plymouth. In September he colllaborated with Grayson Cooke, Thomas Voyce and Dugal McKinnon in Ataata-Rongo, an audiovisual concert melding live taonga puoro, phonography, electronic music and film, as part of the Aotearoa Audio Arts Festival at City Gallery in Wellington. Invited to showcase his solo Toi Puoro work at the highly regarded premiere world-music event WOMEX’18, and only the 3rd New Zealander ever to achieve this honour, he travelled to Gran Caniarias to perform in October, also participating in a conference panel alongside David Rothenberg and Bendicte Maurseth discussing futurism in traditional culture revival, as well as being present at the inaugural Pan Indigenous Network meeting with Hinurewa Te Hau. In November he was the West Harbour Charitable Trust’s Artist-in-Residence in Port Chalmers, Dunedin and worked with 5 of the region’s primary schools and in December he was keynote at the ASAA/NZ 2018 “Improvising Lives” conference.
Early 2017 he returned to Europe to release the much anticipated collaborative Fis album Clear Stones (Subtext Recordings on vinyl and CD) to stunning critical acclaim, performing at the experimental Borderline Festival in Athens Greece, Cafe Oto in London, Superbudda Creative Collective in Torino Italy, and Mondo Muzak Festival in Milan. While in Greece he recorded with pianist Tania Giannouli and only in London for one day and night he also managed to present at Westminster University, and record with Greek hip-hop artist Stereo Mike Exarchos.
Mid-year he took up the highly-regarded position as the Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University in Wellington. While there he devised Te Koki, an electro-acoustic acousmatic composition that sonically imagined a pre-colonial Aotearoa/NZ dawn chorus with Kent Macpherson which was presented to full houses. His work with students at NZ School of Music has included composing and recording for film, and performing and recording both scored and improvised ensemble student works involving saxophone, double bass and drums, electric guitar, percussion and vocal quartet, live electronics, field recordings, analog synthesizer, and strings.
In October he attended WOMEX’17 in Poland as an artist delegate supported by the NZ Music Commission, and in December presented a joint paper at the NZ Musicological Society conference ‘Performing History’ with Stereo Mike Exarchos on their collaborative glitch-hop/taonga puoro work.
2016 was an outstanding year, seeing Rob travelling by invitation to compose and perform a commissioned world-premiere collaborative work with electronic revolutionary Fis at CTM/Transmediale Festival and record at Red Bull Studios in Berlin. A stunning sunrise and sunset performance at the Hamilton Gardens Festival in the traditional Māori garden Te Ara Whakatauki, and a return to Hamilton Fringe Festival with Kent Macpherson, this time with NZSYO cellist Yotam Levy in the audio-visual extravaganza The Unseen Mechanised Eye. He was published in the Cantabrian Society for Sonic Artists print journal Writing Around Sound: In Whose Tradition alongside kiwi sonic luminary Bruce Russell amongst others, with an article that discussed past, present and future traditions. Through the year he worked closely with award winning composer Salina Fisher on her transcription based composition Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne which was premiered by the NZ String Quartet in September, and went on to win the SOUNZ Contemporary Award at the national Silver Scrolls Awards in 2017. In October he took part in Melbourne's Liquid Architecture Why Listen To Animals project, performed at Monash University Museum of Art for the opening of the prestigious exhibition Life Inside An Image, and participated in a group effort at The Unconformity Festival in Queenstown, Tasmania. In November he was the keynote presenter at the NZ Musicological Society 2016 conference, and returned to Tasmania by request of Brian Ritchie to perform five shows at Hobart's renowned MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) for the opening of their new On the Origins of Art exhibition.
2015 saw Rob working collaboratively with Samin Son & Sarah Bingle as Fire Nation, other taonga puoro artists Ariana Tikao & Alistair Fraser in ARA, and Kent Macpherson and Joe Citizen at the Hamilton Fringe Festival in the dance production “{presence}”. In June, Thorne travelled with Charlotte Yates and Gil Eva Craig on a NZ Arts On Tour funded nationwide tour.
In 2014 he released Whāia Te Māramatanga on the renowned Rattle Records label to critical acclaim, was nominated for Best Traditional Album at the Waiata Maori Music Awards, received nomination in the Taite Music Prize, and completed a highly successful NZ national tour. He collaborated by invite with NZ icon Phil Dadson & Chilean musician Enrique Sique in "X-Current" on a North Island tour, presented & performed at WINTEC SPARK Festival and performed & collaborated again with Phil Dadson in the second “Sounding Tiritirimatangi”, with taonga puoro master Richard Nunns, sonic pioneers Michael Morley and Stanier-Black 5, with singer Dudley Benson, and experimental saxophonist Jeff Henderson.
2013 included working with director Vanessa Stacey on her acclaimed Summer Shakespeare show 'The Tempest'; performing with Richard Nunns at Voices of Sacred Earth conference; recording for Dudley Benson's 'Forest' remix project; composing and performing for several theatre productions; and being invited to participate in Phil Dadson's exclusively curated, inaugural, island sound-art exploration "Sounding Tiritirimatangi”. He also travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to research and experience ancient indigenous sound-healing techniques. While in Lima he performed solo, collaborated with jazz drummer Steve Cournane, and lectured on his work with taonga puoro.
In 2012 he received Creative New Zealand funding, and recorded his debut taonga puoro album “Whāia te Māramatanga” with Steve Garden of Rattle Records. He recorded with sonic artist Campbell Kneale, and also with producer and beats master Benny Tones under the moniker Uenuku. He participated in a New Zealand Pacific Studio cultural exchange and performance series as a Resident-at-Large with Korean dancer & drummer Saes Byeol Cha and Italian born guitarist Lorenzo Buhne, was awarded Manawatu Student City Musical Artist of the Year and opened Palmerston North's Christmas in the Park in collaboration with Warren Warbrick.