New Zealand

“Created in New Zealand, heard around the world!” is the vision of SOUNZ, the Centre for New Zealand Music. Services and projects based around the largest accessible collection of New Zealand music in the world means that SOUNZ plays an important role in the promotion and dissemination of music by New Zealand composers.

Services are supported by expert staff who are able to reveal the wealth of NZ music to performers and broadcasters. The SOUNZ website has a searchable database and the Centre sells more than 2,000 different scores, recordings and publications. The library at SOUNZ contains more than 5,500 scores and recordings and information about more than 7,000 works by nearly 300 composers is documented on the Centre’s database.

As well as ‘one-off’ projects, the Centre undertakes many regular activities. These include orchestral readings of NZ music, administration of the annual SOUNZ Contemporary Award celebrating the best of recent composition, curriculum guides for schools, the SOUNZ Community Commission which brings community musicians into contact with professional composers, and SOUNZfine promotional CDs which encourage the broadcast of NZ music.

In 2007 SOUNZ will host the IAMIC Conference in Wellington, the cultural and political capital of New Zealand.