A voice for traditional instruments
Listen to sounds of our landscape at Sunday concert
Affectionately known as Dr Nichola Voice, Paeroabased Nichola Genn Harris is music department head at Thames High School. Born in Nelson, but after spending 35 years bringing up a family in Southland, she shifted in 2021 to Thames where her maternal grandmother was born. When not teaching, she plays flute, piccolo and taonga puoro, and brings her eclectic woodwind music to St George’s Anglican Church, Thames, for a Sunday Afternoon Concert on October 8 presented by Thames Music Group.
Her inspiration to use taonga puoro in her music was born from looking for a new challenge to keep her brain occupied as she finished her PHD — enrolling in a Ma¯ori language course and leading to a new passion.
She has joined a growing number of musicians using taonga puoro. She does not consider herself an expert, but enjoys sharing her journey of discovery with these instruments and often uses them in performance combining with her Western flutes.
Together, taonga puoro and her four flutes create what she laughingly refers to as her “one-man band”.
Combining bass, alto, concert flutes and piccolo with taonga puoro and electro-acoustic backing tracks, Nichola will present Soundscape Aotearoa.
By using music almost exclusively of New Zealand composers such as Anthony Ritchie, Peter Adams, Helen Fisher, and Martin Lodge, the programme depicts our landscape, our history, and our culture, and highlights the uniqueness of the language of Music in New Zealand, with its fusion of Western Art Music, crosscultural inspiration, and the sounds of our landscape.