Gareth Farr – NZ Composer

Gareth’s new album ‘Gareth Farr / Edward Elgar: Cello Concertos’, featuring Sébastien Hurtaud and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Benjamin Northey, has been released internationally on the UK label RUBICON. Gareth wrote his cello concerto after discovering some family history. Towards the end of WWI, his three great grand-uncles left […]

On Jun 25th 2020, The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Wellington City Council presented “Ngū Kīoro… Harikoa Ake – Celebrating Togetherness”, a celebration of the enormous effort New Zealanders made to protect the vulnerable and eliminate COVID-19. Gareth’s From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs featured.

The New Zealand String Quartet has brilliant performances of two of Gareth’s compositions, filmed beautifully and available on YouTube. Watch the NZSQ perform Te Tai-O-Rehua and He Poroporoaki.

NZTrio will be joined by musician and composer Horomona Horo playing taonga pūoro in a programme reflecting on our past, while celebrating new horizons and possibilities. It includes three newly commissioned pieces, from Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead (Ngāi Te Rangi), Martin Lodge and Jeremy Mayall, alongside works composed by Victoria Kelly, Richard Nunns and Gareth […]

Gareth and poet Bill Manhire’s collaboration, “Songs for the Birds”, has been featured in a fantastic article by Elizabeth Kerr on the Noted website.

Gareth has written a fanfare – “rumbling cacophony of sound to show off a bit” – for the 2019 Wellington International Pride Parade, that will bring the theme of FIRE | AHI to life and be performed by Orchestra Wellington! He felt compelled to write a Pride Fanfare because the opening of the parade cries […]

Gareth grew up with the photos of three young men in army uniform on the wall in his parents’ home. He didn’t know much about them until his mother recounted their history. The Byrne brothers, Frank, Vince and Charlie, all volunteered for the First World War. All three died in the last 18 months of […]

Gareth, who this year celebrated his 50th birthday (or possibly his 12.5th), popped into the Radio New Zealand studios to share stories about life, music and things that go wrong on stage. Read more and listen to the full interview on RNZ’s site.

Gareth’s cello concerto was recently performed in Paris as part of the French Armistice Day celebrations. The orchestra of the Garde Répulicaine performed the concerto with cellist Sébastien Hurtaud in the Cathedrale St. Louis des Invalides. If your French is très bien, you can listen to an interview with Sébastien here.

Tui bird calls heard in the Marlborough Sounds were the inspiration behind Gareth Farr’s new string quartet Te Kōanga premiered by the touring Heath Quartet this week. “As the water taxi pulled in, I could hear the tui calls, and it was the same call I notated when I was 16,” Gareth says. The work […]

Sébastien Hurtaud Gareth Farr’s Cello Concerto ‘Chemin des Dames’ is having its world premiere as part of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concert Aotearoa-Plus. It pays tribute to the soldiers who fell on the First World War battlefields of France and Belgium and reminds us of the profound grief and trauma felt by their families […]

  Photos Gate Photography The Bone Feeder recently played as part of the Auckland Festival 23-26 March. A new opera, beautifully and imaginatively scored by Gareth Farr and written by poet and playwright Renee Liang, which explores the mysteries, traumas and gifts of migration, home and belonging. A young Chinese man searching for his roots […]

Bess Manson has written a great article on Gareth in The Dominion Post (April 23rd 2016), and it’s accompanied by a fantastic, nearly full-page photo by Ross Giblin. As a kid, Gareth Farr played the piano as if it had committed some sort of misdemeanour. He hit those ivory keys like they were a contrary […]

Relict Furies is playing as part of the New Zealand Festival on Tuesday March 15th. You can see more details and download a programme from the Festival’s website. Update: John Button for Stuff and Peter Mechen for Middle C have written reviews of the performance. Nau mai haere mai ki te Taurima o Aotearoa. At […]

Come along and join Emcee Gareth Farr and Wellington’s performing arts fraternity as we band together to honour a beloved friend, colleague and cohort – Robbie Tripe. Sunday 6th September at San Fran, a one night only performance to raise money and awareness for The Mental Health Foundation NZ. This tribute is our way of honouring a […]

The next few months are looking very busy for Gareth! Upcoming commissions include: A piece for Ben Baker, a young Kiwi violinist living and working in London, for piano trio. A short piece for Sydney’s renowned vocal sextet, the Song Company; it’s the setting of a poem by the iconic Australian poet and cartoonist, Leunig. […]