Thomas Press
Is an Auckland based composer/sound designer, and 2015 winner of the Auckland Theatre Awards’ ‘Best Music’ award.
‘‘MY CHILDHOOD was mercifully free from Abba and the Bee Gees; instead, I was brought up on a healthy diet of Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faithful, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed and classical music.
‘‘The first pop record I owned was a cassette of New Musik’s From A to B my Dad made me for my 10th birthday. My sister got me The Offspring’s Americana for my 13th Birthday, a record that’s still dear to me. I experienced a fleeting moment of rock’n’roll rebellion at a Halloween-themed party at high school, where the music teacher tried to get our squeaky-voiced Offspring covers band to sing ‘my friend’s got a girlfriend, man, he hates that witch’ rather than the lyrically correct ‘bitch’. In the end, we were outdone by an older band singing Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name Of later that same night.
‘‘Music school opened me up to the minimalist composers Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. PJ Harvey has also been with me at various points of my life – from the fragile We Float on the Big Day Out compilation disc I won on the radio in 2001, to driving through Italy with a German girl who introduced me to the raw grit of To Bring You My Love, to the highly relevant This is England on the iPod travelling from Gatwick Airport into the city centre as my introduction to England.
‘‘I’ve also been massively influenced by Ben Frost, an Australian composer who creates incredibly claustrophobic and energetic minimalist music that expresses a deep unease with the state of the world. As well as experimental noise, I love music that tells stories – artists like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Amanda Palmer – and I love using soundscapes to help people tell their own stories.
‘‘I’m currently composing for a new production by Red Leap: Dust Pilgrim is set in an unspecified desert world, so I’ve been exploring the music of Andalusia, which is fascinating collision of Spanish, African and Middle Eastern influences.’’ Directed by Julie Nolan and Kate Parker and performed by Red Leap Theatre, Dust Pilgrim – A Tale of Freedom