Take Flight – from the Jurassic through to cyberspace, encounter annoying machines, experience big weather and hear a talking river, birds by the billion and lots of water. Wear a crazy hair-do, meet four dead composers, read a Maori legend, de-nature some nursery rhymes, gallop with wild horses and a flighty heifer. Dance, eat, whistle, visit an art gallery and reach the Great Gate of Kiev. Discover beauty and bi-tonality, modes and medievalism, clusters and syncopated slurs, number theories and tone-clocks, jazz and Hanon study gone berserk.
Taste what it is like to be a New Zealander. Thirty New Zealand composers wrote for Take Flight, ranging from some of the most famous to two young students.
The majority of pieces are suitable for students of grades 3 to 5, though there are a few easier pieces to encourage sight-reading and several, including a duet, which will provide challenge for more advanced pianists.
This book, edited by Gillian Bibby, is part of a planned series of volumes of piano music from New Zealand, and follows Sunrise (2008), which catered for the young and very young pianists.
Two CDs of the music are included on which all the works are performed by pianists Gillian Bibby, Judith McDonald and Catherine McKay with a 'whistle-stop' appearance from baritone, Roger Wilson.