Composer Briar Prastiti: artist on the edge

Composer Briar Prastiti is living in the Lilburn Residence in Wellington. The former Thorndon home of the late Douglas Lilburn, revered New Zealand composer, has been owned by a Trust since 2005 and regularly hosts composers-in-residence to live and compose there. The distinguished list of almost a score of New Zealand composers who have worked in the Residence begins with Dame Gillian Whitehead, who was followed in 2006/7 by the late Lyell Cresswell.

“Are there ghosts?” I ask Prastiti, during a recent conversation. She takes my question seriously. “I’ve been wondering if it’s haunted,” she says. “I’ve noticed things falling over and lights flickering and doors opening. I sense the creative energy that’s passed through this house, and I’ve been swept into that. I feel more focused and driven here as a composer than I’ve ever felt. It may be the pressure of the residency and needing to get things done, or all these deadlines I have, but there’s something different about this place.”

In the Lilburn Residence

…the view from Briar Prastiti’s composing studio

Prastiti describes herself as “omni-directional” and the deadlines she refers to cover a wide range of work. Currently she’s completing music for the play Prima Facie, about to open at Circa Theatre, and she has two upcoming premieres for Orchestra Wellington this year and another orchestral work, Pegasus, for the Bay of Plenty Symphonia, scheduled for debut in her hometown, Tauranga. “I don’t just do music; I also do illustrative art and poetry and other forms of artistic expression. I see myself as an artist.”

This talented young composer, now 31, also crosses musical boundaries with ease. She followed a teenage dream to be a film composer, meanwhile writing and singing songs, releasing albums and performing in bands and a gamelan orchestra. In 2016 she completed a Master of Musical Arts majoring in composition with high distinction, at Victoria University’s NZ School of Music, and the ethnomusicology she encountered there is just one of many influences.

The Prima Facie project, currently in rehearsal, came from her song-writing. “I have an alter ego, an electronic artist name, HydraBitch. The director of the play, Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, heard my song Red Sun, fell in love with it and wants a score extrapolated from that song. Everything is being put together, a bit of a mad rush, but that’s how these projects are.”

Composer Briar Prastiti

“…I have an alter ego, HydraBitch.”

Prastiti’s father, a flamenco guitarist, was born in Cyprus and she grew up with flamenco and Greek music in an artistic household, her New Zealand-born mother a visual artist and her sister a jazz musician.

“Being half-Greek is a really strong part of my identity. One of my upcoming works for Orchestra Wellington is called Akri; it’s a Greek word meaning “edge”. I’m on the edge of being Greek, I’m on the edge of being a New Zealander, but I’m not fully either one. There’s a lot of influence from Greek singing in that piece. It started out as a vocal improvisation, with the Greek style of melisma and trills, and I used those elements in the work.”

About five years ago Prastiti left New Zealand for a trip overseas. It was supposed to last four or five months. After touring in the US with the band HEX, she spent three months in Mexico before visiting family in Cyprus and travelling in the Balkan countries. “I landed in Greece, not really knowing what I was doing, but knowing I didn’t want to come back to New Zealand at that point. One thing led to another, and I ended up staying for almost four years. I didn’t expect to live in Greece – I’d always wanted to live in Central or South America, I was really avid about Spanish – but while there I learned the Greek language and the Greek life, including a fully immersive nine months course at the university in the city of Thessaloniki. It was a really influential time.”

Briar Prastiti performing Greek music

… there is a lot of influence from Greek singing in her new work, Akri.

With composing projects from New Zealand to complete, she worked in Greece as a graphic designer and did some vocal teaching on-line to support herself.  COVID disruptions and New Zealand’s closed border made for an anxious time, however, and Greece itself was suffering through a refugee crisis and economic difficulties. Eventually she felt the call of home. “I was born here, I have family here, and I wanted to see them.”

Since her return, she has been awarded the Lilburn Residence Trust residency, which will be extended till February 2024 by a composer-in-residence position supported by the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University. “I didn’t expect to be living in this house, especially so soon after coming back,” she says. “I’ve always looked at the composers who lived here and thought ‘Wow! They’re at the top of their careers and really killing it!’ I’ve suffered from a lot of self-doubt.”

The two Orchestra Wellington commissions for 2023 mean mentoring from Greek New Zealander John Psathas, the Orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence since 2020. She gives a lot of credit to Psathas for supporting her composing career in many ways and over a long period.

Briar Prastiti with her mentor John Psathas

“…he’s had a huge impact on my life as a composer.”

“He’s had a huge impact on my life as a composer, as a person, through his music and the opportunities he’s given me. When I was in high school, I saw a documentary about him on television and read about him a magazine. I looked up his music and was blown away. He was one of the reasons I came to study in Wellington. John was my professor at university and since then we’ve continued the mentorship and friendship. I can’t put into words how important he’s been.”

After Akri’s premiere in August comes an orchestral arrangement of a song she wrote a decade ago for voice and guitar. “That song, White, Red, Black, has been in the shadows for a long time; not many people have heard it,” she tells me. “For me, it’s one of the most important and special songs of my life, it encapsulates a lot of pathos. John has heard it and loves it.”

Where does the title come from?  “Those three colours are significant in folk lore, they often come up in different cultures. White signifies birth, red is fertility, and black is death.” Prastiti will sing the song in its orchestral arrangement and Psathas will play the piano part.

Prastiti laughs about the older composer’s on-stage confidence. “John wants to get back into more performing, so it’s no small gigs in bars for him, he’s so well-known and successful, he just goes straight into playing with an orchestra.”

Music, she says, “is deeply personal for me and comes from a need to express things. One of those things is the identity crisis I have, the dissonance between the Greek side and the New Zealand side.”  Her shared Greek heritage with Psathas has been an important part of their bond. “It’s something we understand, both being Greeks in New Zealand.”

Prima Facie by Suzie Miller, starring Mel Dodge, Lyndee-Jane Rutherford (director), Briar Prastiti (music) Presented by Kavanah Productions & BRAVE Theatre at Circa Theatre, Wellington 24 June-22 July 2023 Bookings here

Orchestra Wellington PROPHECY, premiere of Akri by Briar Prastiti and music by Thomas Adès, Benjamin Britten and William Walton Wellington 5 August 2023 Tickets here

Orchestra Wellington PHARAOH, premieres of White, Red, Black by Briar Prastiti and Planet Damnation for timpani and orchestra by John Psathas, with music by Anton Webern and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wellington 7 October 2023 Tickets here

Bay of Plenty Symphonia Concert 3, premiere of Pegasus by Briar Prastiti and music by Mozart, Wieniawski and Mendelssohn Tauranga, 19 November 2023