Mana Moana

There are so few opportunities to enjoy collaborations like this one that the audience dived wholeheartedly into the enormously uplifting experience Mana Moana offered us. The very full programme was a repertoire of songs from around the Pacific Islands arranged for Signature Choir and the NZSO. “Pasifika music is grounded in storytelling, vocal interplay, and spiritual expression while orchestral music brings scale, structure, and emotional range,” Signature Choir founder and music director Fepulea’i Helen Tupai says.

The Signature Choir embraces more than 50 vocalists, and was formed three years ago in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington to promote Pacific language and culture through music. The local audience loves their local choir and plenty of waves, smiles, greetings, and eye contact between singers and family in the crowd added to the palpable excitement in the sold-out auditorium.

We voyaged between the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, and Tonga, guided by exceptional talent: Helen Tupai and Jadrah Tupai, director and co-director of the Signature Choir; Brent Stewart conducting the NZSO; and MC Tofiga Fepulea’i. With one of Aotearoa’s leading comedians at the helm, the evening was filled with laughter as well as the simple but powerful happiness inspired by the music.

And the music was awesome. The choir was superbly supported by the orchestra. Voices might sometimes be overwhelmed by instruments but not in this performance. The sounds of the Pacific were front and centre and the orchestra proved how musical traditions can step out of their familiar spaces. Western culture claimed the term ‘classical’ for its music and musicians, but the NZSO showed us how they can flex those boundaries. Expert arrangements and wonderful performances demonstrated how cultures can combine in musical and metaphorical harmony. Whoops, cheers, dancing, clapping, singing, laughter, and delight were the other prominent sounds of the evening, all of them rapidly growing in the last quarter of the show. Pure joy.