Episode 106 — April 22, 2021
Gareth Farr: “Wakatipu” for violin
Performed by Benjamin Baker

Though violinist Benjamin Baker has spent time living in the United Kingdom and traveling to cities across the globe, he holds a fondness for his Wellington, New Zealand hometown. He visits at least once a year, and makes a concerted effort to bring musicians from different countries to perform in New Zealand. For his House Music series video, he brings a piece of New Zealand, performing longtime friend Gareth Farr’s Wakatipu.

This is Baker’s first collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble. He first connected with the group through a mutual friend who supports both Metropolis and Baker’s New Zealand-based music festival, At The World’s Edge Festival. They immediately hit it off, conversing about ways to connect Baker’s work in New Zealand with Metropolis’s work in New York, but because the COVID-19 pandemic has put all in-person concerts on hold, the House Music series seemed like the best place to start.

Baker has been playing Wakatipu since 2015, and the House Music series felt like the perfect time to bring the piece back to the stage. The work is inspired by the lake that Queenstown, New Zealand, sits on, which has an awe-inspiring beauty and brilliance that Farr captures in his music. There’s also a myth that explains why the lake’s surface rises and falls: Long ago, a giant abducted the daughter of a local Maori chief and took him to the mountains, but he became tired and laid down to sleep. The lover had followed them and then set the giant on fire, and his flesh burned and created the lake. But his heart didn’t burn, and its beat is what causes the rise and fall of the lake’s water. Just like Baker’s festival that originally connected him with Metropolis, Wakatipu is a way of bringing a piece of New Zealand to New York.

Ben Baker is also celebrating the release of his album, 1942: Prokofiev, Copland, Poulenc, on April 23.

Notes by Vanessa Ague

 
House Music: Bite-sized concerts recorded at homes around the world

In 2020-21, we created a weekly video series featuring short-form concerts of newly-commissioned works, supporting 208 artists around the world during the pandemic.