An Easter celebration of music
Music lovers, rejoice! Easter Weekend 2025 promises to be a festive weekend rich in musical celebrations for our local community and visitors.
Weaving together Aotearoa’s outstanding emerging artists and internationally-renowned musicians with local performers, the Whakatipu Music Festival is a 'must-do' for the holiday weekend.
Six stunning concerts take place at the Queenstown Memorial Centre over four days from April 18 – 21, showcasing a range of genres in intimate spaces. The inspirational performances are bound to take your breath away.
"Performance experience has been in short supply recently so it's especially important and wonderful that the festival provides such a wide-ranging platform for our finest talent,” pianist Stephen De Pledge says. "We're looking forward to sharing the music with you all, our musicians, audience, supporters and community as you experience exciting performers on the cusp of their careers."
This year the festival has joined with Choirs Aotearoa in bringing several of their artists down to join a massed choir with members of the community. This Rejoice! event brings the festival to a rousing conclusion on Easter Monday as the local community choir performs with festival artists and a live orchestra.
Sing your heart out for Rejoice!
Everyone's invited to take part! Conductors Dr. Karen Grylls and Elise Bradley provide coaching and development in community rehearsals ahead of the performance of The Hallelujah Chorus, O Fortuna, and Ode to Joy supported by members of the National Youth Choir and a live orchestra. Registrations are open and aspiring musicians need not be shy, (you don't have to be Taylor Swift, Dame Kiri Te Kawana or able to read music) just come and enjoy singing with your community.
“We’d really love as many people as possible to join us in celebrating this Easter season with music that touches the heart and thrills the soul,” festival director Anne Rodda says.
A separate workshop on Singing in an Ensemble focuses on blending and other vocal techniques for a choir room. Workshops in piano and strings are aimed at music students and their teachers. Stephen de Pledge and Bernadette Harvey host a piano workshop on the evening of Tuesday, 15 April and Ioana Cristina Goicea and Julian Smiles hold a string workshop on Thursday, 17 April.
Celebrating young artists
Emerging artist and Arrowtown-born Austin Haynes is a countertenor and a poet who will read his translations of Shakespeare into Te Reo Māori at Frankton Library (Thursday evening, 17 April).
"I’m really excited to return to the Whakatipu for wonderful music making with talented colleagues," Austin says. "I’m happy to reunite with old friends, meet some new ones, and debut new repertoire in the Next Gen 2 concert."
Austin is one of 12 emerging young artists (aged 18-28) who were selected through rigorous auditions to undergo coaching and development from festival artists. Next Gen events also feature young local students from Kinga Krupa Music and Turn Up The Music – giving them an invaluable opportunity to perform on stage.
Young artist and violist Tal Amoore has a deep passion for chamber music.
“There’s something magical about stepping into a rehearsal with musicians who each bring their own ideas and energy and then shaping a piece in real time,” he says.
Tal has performed with NZ Opera and the Royal NZ Ballet and will perform Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Piano Quintet at Musical Smorgasbord.
"Coleridge-Taylor was only 18 when he wrote this piece, and you can feel the youthful energy bursting through the music.”
Born in New Zealand, Esther Oh picked up violin at age five after deciding piano was “too difficult”. Currently in their second year of conducting and violin at Auckland University, Esther recently performed with the Thailand Philharmonic and held a masterclass for children in impoverished neighbourhoods. Esther is looking forward to Opening Night and playing Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonato No.1.
"Ysaÿe’s Sonata brims with finesse in an electrifying fusion of Bach’s genius, and the violin’s virtuosic capacity,”Esther says. “Its intensity makes the first movement a heart-racing challenge to play on stage."
Anne Rodda says potential audiences, whether classical music lovers or not, can’t fail to be transported into another world with the skill and passion of these individuals.
"Queenstown is lucky to have this rare calibre of artists on our stage."
