Tag: music

  • Stars – a Conversation and Cloth event

    This coming week, on Wednesday 26th June, there will be a Conversation and Cloth event in Hokitika. At 5:30 in the library I will be talking about the stars, an appropriate topic for Matariki. I will have some of the stars of the collection, such as the one pictured below, with me and will present…

  • Venice and the Biennale – part two

    The Venice Biennale’s traditional site is the Giardini, public gardens created by Napoleon at the start of the 19th Century. The first years of the exhibition saw more than 200,000 people attend the venues and over the decades since buildings have been erected to house country pavilions, showcasing artists and ideas from around the globe,…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week a curated playlist from Spotify is made for the blog. The playlist references articles in some way and this week it features music from and about Venice, as well as pieces that have a link with the artists who are represented at the Biennale.

  • Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi

    Venice has long been known for its music, art and artists. In the narrow route along a canal that leads past Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery of European and American art is a small shop with windows that tell of the artistic eye of Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi. Enchanting and wondrous, this shop is a destination for the…

  • Conversation and Cloth – Hokitika

    The West Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand is full of history and tales. In the middle of the Southern Winter, as the world turns and seasons change, a star cluster rises in the sky. This is known in New Zealand as Matariki, a shortened version of “Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea” (the eyes of the…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    The playlist this week, as always, references articles on the blog. It is a curated list of interesting and unusual pieces, some old and some new, in different genres, all related in some way to the blog. In this week’s playlist, “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” by Béla Bartók is included in its entirety. This work, the…

  • A tapa sampler

    The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Aotearoa’s national museum, has a unique taonga: a book of tapa samples. This book, rather grandly entitled “A Catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook, to the Southern hemisphere : with a particular account of the manner of the…

  • Can indigenous knowledge help mathematics?

    A university in Australia, the Australian National University, has developed a course in mathematics that includes teaching about Indigenous Knowledge. For anyone interested in mathematics, particularly where the arts are concerned – see the read more section below – a course that includes this kind of knowledge is invaluable. There are many ways of explaining…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week a playlist on the streaming platform, Spotify, is created to go along with the blog. The list relates to articles on the blog, some obvious and others not. The playlist brings together music from diverse sources and genres, linked through common themes. To hear the playlist click on the player above or open…

  • Thula Mntwana/ Dingaka Lullaby

    Thula Mntwana is a well-known and much-loved song from South Africa, but it has a troubled history. In 1964 the film Dingaka was released. It told the story of a man seeking revenge on those who had killed his daughter, and his subsequent trial for murder. The film (you can see it on the YouTube…