Photo credit: Gareth Watkins / Lilburn Trust
WELCOME
Composer, conductor, author, speaker, educator and publisher Philip Norman has been entertaining Aotearoa New Zealand audiences for forty-five years. His output of over 250 compositions ranges from orchestral, chamber music and opera (A Christmas Carol) through secular and sacred choral and vocal works, to musicals with playwright Roger Hall (including Love Off the Shelf and Footrot Flats – still New Zealand’s best selling musical) and ballets for the Royal New Zealand Ballet such as the highly successful Peter Pan (toured New Zealand three times).
Philip holds a PhD in musicology and is the award-winning author of Douglas Lilburn: His Life and Music and the compiler and publisher of John Ritchie at Ninety: a festschrift. He was invested as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to music and music theatre in 2015. He was the recipient of the 2017/2018 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers' Fellowship and is currently writing a history of composition in New Zealand.
UPCOMING EVENTS
// Performance/music
In Praise of Living Poets
Jubilate Singers
Twelve Canterbury composers meet 12 Canterbury poets in a specially and freshly blended programme of music and words for SATB singers. Includes Philip's setting of Tusiata Avia's I'm writing you a poem about Art, recited by Tusiata. Also featuring accompanist Jeremy Woodside.
// Performance/music
EEK! Spooky music for Halloweeners
Risingholme Orchestra
A fun-filled family concert featuring all the old favourites – Danse Macabre, Berlioz's Witches Sabbath, Night on Bare Mountain, The Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show, Vampyre Overture by Marschner, and frightening 'glow in the dark' orchestral sound effects by various Christchurch composers. Philip conducts.
Sunday 2 November 2025 |2pm
The Piano, 156 Armagh St., Christchurch
// Performance
BACH, BACH ANd OFFENBACH
Jubilate Singers
Four generations of Bachs charting the course of music from early Baroque to Classical styles. Glorious music charting the course of the eighteenth century from JS Bach's uncles and father-in-law, through his sons and a grandson. There is also bonus music by Offenbach and JS Bach's 21st son PDQ. Philip conducts.
Occasional Writing by Philip Norman
A hugely entertaining collection of articles, lyrics and talks from five decades of writing in Aotearoa New Zealand. An accidental autobiography, Wit & Wisdom reveals an energetic and productive life as a composer, lyricist, writer and conductor.
Wit & Wisdom can be purchased for $30, plus postage and packaging ($7)
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A 21-chapter salute to a cultural icon. Winner of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2007 biography category, this book offers fascinating insights into the world of New Zealand music, literature and fine art through the eyes and ears of one of New Zealand’s most creative sons, ‘the father of New Zealand composition’, Douglas Lilburn.
Douglas Lilburn: His Life and Music
can be purchased for $40,
plus postage and packaging ($7)
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