Gillian Whitehead

Gillian Whitehead studied at Victoria University of Wellington and University of Sydney. The recorded working language is English. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera, choral music and taonga pūoro. Employment is recorded with Newcastle University. Distinctions recorded are Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and Mozart Fellowship.

• Honorific Prefix — Dame • Name — Gillian Whitehead • Honorific Suffix — DNZM • Occupation — Classical composer • Birth Name — Gillian Karawe Whitehead • Born — 23 April 1941 • Birthplace — Hamilton, New Zealand

Whitehead was born in Hamilton in 1941. The daughter of Ivan and Marjorie Whitehead, she is of Ngāi Te Rangi descent. Her father was a music teacher and conductor of the Waipu Choral Society and her mother played the piano. She began composing early, making clear to her mother at age 17 that she wanted to be a composer.

She studied at the University of Auckland from 1959 to 1962, and Victoria University of Wellington in 1963, graduating BMus(Hons) in 1964. She then studied composition at the University of Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe from 1964–65, graduating MMus in 1966. That same year she attended a composition course given by Peter Maxwell Davies and in 1967 travelled to England to continue studying with him.

Whitehead worked in London composing and copying music for two years and then with the assistance of a New Zealand Arts Council grant worked in Portugal and Italy from 1969 to 1970. For the next seven years she continued freelance composing, principally based in the United Kingdom. From 1978 to 1980, she held an English academic post, having been during that time Composer in Residence for Northern Arts attached to Newcastle University. In 1981, she returned to New South Wales, to join the staff of the Composition School at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was Head of Composition for four years. She left the Conservatorium in 1996. Since then she has spent most of her time in New Zealand, mostly in Dunedin. In 1989 she was Composer in Residence at Victoria University of Wellington. She took up the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1992. During 2000 and 2001 she was Composer in Residence at the Auckland Philharmonia. Her major orchestral work, The Improbable Ordered Dance, written during the Residency won the 2001 SOUNZ Contemporary Award. From 1998 to 2003 she was president of the Composers Association of New Zealand. In 2005–2006 she was the Composer in Residence at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University. She was the first Composer in Residence to stay at the Lilburn Residence. In 2009 Whitehead was one of the 2009 Henderson Arts Trust artists-in-residence in Alexandra.

Whitehead has used magic squares in her composition, also used by Peter Maxwell Davies and others. She first read about them in the 1970s and used them for the next 20 years. In the 1980s when she moved to Sydney she used squares but much more freely and later pieces combined prime numbers and squares in a more integrated way. Squares remained as the starting point of her composing but later she moved to compose more instinctively. She acknowledged the process of using a systematic approach, its potential and then moving away from it. • Illustration — 2018 Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Awards an event at Government House, Wellington, New Zealand

• Resurgences (1989) • … the improbable ordered dance … (2000) • Turanga-nui (2017) • Retrieving the fragility of peace (2022)

• Tristan and Iseult (1976) • The King of the Other Country (1983) – libretto by Fleur Adcock • The Art of Pizza (1995) – libretto by Anna Maria Dell'Oso • Outrageous Fortune (1998) • Iris dreaming (2016) • Mate Ururoa (2021)

• Pakuru (1967) – based on Hone Tuwhare's poem 'Thine own hands have fashioned' • Inner Harbour (1979) – based on Fleur Adcock's poems • Hotspur (1980) – based on Fleur Adcock's poems

• At night the garden was full of voices (1977) • Ahotu (ō matenga) (1984) • Clouds over Mata-au (2010) • Ad Parnassum – Purapurawhetū (2021)