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/composition
A Christmas Carol
Jubilate Singers
A Choral entertainment with soloists based on Philip's music for his much-loved ballet and opera based on Dickens's tale. Philip conducts. Featuring Alex Robinson as Scrooge.
// Performance/composition
Matinée Musicale
Risingholme Orchestra
Featuring two movements from Philip's 1995 Concerto for Violin and Piano with soloists Anna Maksymova piano and Amandine Combes Guerin violin. Philip conducts.
Saturday 22 Nov 2026 | 2pm
The Piano Armagh St
// composition
once upon a rhyme
Christchurch Youth Choir
Featuring Philip's popular and quirky 1995 song cycle Plumsong, setting parody poems by AK Grant. Conducted by Jared Corbett.
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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