Richard Nunns - breathing life into singing treasures

On June 7 this year musician Richard Nunns died in Nelson aged 75. He is mourned by an enormous number of musicians, composers and others and many tributes have flowed this month praising his extraordinary work as a pioneer in performance on taonga pūoro, Maori traditional instruments, and his huge contribution to the revival of knowledge about these treasures and the performing traditions that bring them to life. He was the recipient of many awards and honours for this work.

I first met Richard at Victoria University of Wellington in the 1980’s and was impressed by the tall red-headed man who spoke confident and fluent te reo Māori at a time when few Pākehā used the language. He demonstrated taonga pūoro then to a fascinated audience of staff and students as he did so many times over many decades around the country and the world.

Years later I got to know Richard better when he toured several times with the New Zealand String Quartet playing works written for the five of them by composer Gillian Karawe Whitehead. Richard had introduced Gillian to taonga pūoro, showing her the fronds of a spleenwort hanging from a Nelson tree in the late 1990’s. “This is the hair of Hine Raukatauri,” he said to her then. “One day I’d like you to write a piece about her.”

A putorino

…embodying the voice of Hineraukatauri.

The pūtorino, shaped like the female case moth and played like a flute or trumpet, embodies the voice of Hineraukatauri, goddess of music and dance.  Gillian’s Hineraukatauri was premiered a year later in America by flutist Alexa Still with Richard on taonga pūoro and the work was one of the first in an astonishingly fruitful and continuing tradition of New Zealand composers collaborating with taonga pūoro musicians. The beautiful and haunting work will be performed later this year in the Chamber Music New Zealand touring programme “Silver. Stone. Wood. Bone” with flutist Bridget Douglas and taonga pūoro musician Alistair Fraser.

Touring on three occasions in Europe with Richard, who was by then suffering from the early stages of the Parkinson's disease that ended his life, was not without challenges. Richard had an awesome determination to continue performing and introducing taonga pūoro to international audiences and he was quite sure he had to travel. I vividly remember anxiously seeing him off at Prague airport in 2008, sitting in a wheelchair holding a very large gourd on his knee and being wheeled off to a flight to Turkey where he had a gig booked with improvising folk musicians. I crossed my fingers that someone would meet and look after him at the other end.

This was nothing unusual. Richard performed frequently with all kinds of musicians all over the globe. The Prague visit was part of an extensive European tour by the Quartet on which Richard joined them for several concerts playing Gillian Whitehead's quintet Puhake ki te rangi, a work about whales for string quartet and taonga pūoro. To do this he travelled with a collection including whalebone instruments, and I'd assisted him before departure in negotiating the complicated CITES requirements about endangered species to get them across international borders.

Richard Nunns playing a rare whalebone nguru

A few years later, he joined us in London for a week-long festival project called “NZ at Kings Place”, where he introduced a huge collection of taonga pūoro in a talk to an intrigued an audience of Londoners, joking as he often did about the tremors he suffered.  The day after a concert in which he performed Gillian’s Hine-pu-te-hue with the Quartet we steered him and his instruments into a taxi to Heathrow for the flight home. "What will happen when we get to the airport?" asked the taxi driver nervously. Richard was unperturbed - he always got himself and his treasures home safely.

Richard’s pioneering work on taonga pūoro was undertaken as part of a committed trio with Tuhōe educator, composer and musician Hirini Melbourne, who died in 2003, and master carver and instrument maker Brian Flintoff.  Richard described their work as a journey, detailed in the illustrated book Te Ara Puoro that he wrote with the late Allan Thomas, a fascinating account published in 2014. “Along the way,” he wrote, “we drew together many different contribution – the memories  of the elders expressed at marae performances, the qualities suggested by the instrument materials themselves, the acoustic and musical realities discovered through experimentation and interaction with our colleagues in the Māori and musical worlds.”

This week the NZSO will present the premiere of Gareth Farr’s Ngā Hihi o Matariki (The Rays of Matariki), an orchestral work created in collaboration with taonga pūoro musician Ariana Tikao and kaikaranga Mere Boynton. Both Gareth and Ariana were mentored by Richard and this new work is a poignant example of his enduring legacy.

Richard Nunns with composer Gareth Farr

Sharing his knowledge about taonga pūoro was a passion of Richard’s for over four decades. He readily crossed genre boundaries, collaborated and improvised with musicians and composers of all kinds, and with great generosity mentored, explained, inspired and taught so many of us. His legacy is huge and not least within it is the growing group of younger musicians, Māori and Pākehā, who, often under his guidance, have developed skills and knowledge about these singing treasures and will continue to keep their voices alive.

Moe mai rā e te rangatira. Moe mai rā e hoa.

NZSO  “Matariki” with the world premiere of Ngā Hihi o Matariki by Gareth Farr, with Ariana Tikao (taonga pūoro) and Mere Boynton (kaikaranga). Auckland 2 July, Wellington 9 July, broadcast live by RNZ Concert on 9 July. (A concert preview is published on this site here.)

 Te Ara Pūoro: A Journey into the world of Māori Music  by Richard Nunns with Allan Thomas (Craig Potton Publishing 2014) available for purchase from SOUNZ

Numerous CDs featuring the playing of Richard Nunns are available from Rattle Records

Puhake ki te rangi A CD featuring the music of Gillian Whitehead with Richard Nunns (taonga pūoro) and the New Zealand String Quartet is available from Atoll Records