Standing on Marine Parade before this concert, a calm green/blue sea, gulls and a dark-lined horizon, I wondered how on earth a wholeness could be created out of the great risotto of influences identified in the programme notes. From sea serpents, whales, Mother Theresa, Māori, Finnish, Indonesian cultures, waka made of human bones, and so much more. […]

ST Paul’s Cathedral was the venue for Voices New Zealand’s midwinter Yulefest recital entitled ‘‘Follow the Star’’.

We hear so much about the country’s top sports teams, but I was delighted to review Saturday’s Dunedin performance by one of New Zealand’s international award winning choirs.

Last week the Auckland Philharmonia premiered FACE, a new work commissioned from Ross Harris. The piece was inspired by the story of Sir Harold Gillies, the New Zealander who became the father of plastic surgery and who, along with several other New Zealand surgeons treated the disfiguring facial injuries sustained by soldiers during World War I.

The APO and VOICES NZ perform NZ composer Ross Harris’s new work, Face.

“One sensed justifiable pride when Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra CEO Barbara Glaser announced the Enigma concert had drawn a full house and, best of all, the programme included a major commission, shared with the BBC, ” writes William Dart.

“The King’s Singers sextet were good-humoured, supremely talented, effortlessly accomplished, confident and gracious. Voices New Zealand was impeccably supportive, balancing the sextet and reinforcing the climax of the chosen works. The two groups were complementary, symphonious – superb.

It was a refined, inspiring, entertaining evening – a precise, crystalline, perfect concert.”- Stephen Gibbs

NZ Herald’s William Dart reviews the latest VOICES CD, ‘Requiem for the fallen’

The commissioning of challenging new work is essential in a genre that can at times feel safely, beautifully two-dimensional, and The Unusual Silence is a commission Grylls and Voices New Zealand can be thoroughly proud of.  

The Unusual Silence, Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir’s WWI commemoration, was a powerful and reverberant experience in the marble halls of Auckland Museum.

….the 24 singers of Voices NZ Chamber Choir displaying the vocal heft of three times that number….

Audiences were treated to an epic staging of Jack Body’s PASSIO on Sunday as part of the 2017 Auckland Arts Festival.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa performs with Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir at the Michael Fowler Centre, March 13 2016, reviewed by Lindis Taylor of Middle C.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa performs with Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir at the Michael Fowler Centre, March 13 2016, reviewed by John Button of the Dominion Post.

Conductor Karen Grylls explains the disc’s title, Voice of the Soul, as “a metaphor for a journey of traditions, story telling and passionate music of the senses”.

In festival’s homegrown highlight, orchestra and voices give rich offering of oratorio’s message of peace.

In a nutshell, as the Festival brochure put it, Ata Reira promised an evening of award-winning choirs, majestic voices and Te Reo Maori in song. Both separately and together, Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the New Zealand Youth Choir delivered all this in a choral celebration of light … and much more.

Voices 16, from the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, show a tremendous versatility in a varied yet totally cohesive concert for Atoll Records that creates some especially fine atmospheric moments

“..a fascinating and lovingly prepared programme which made a strong and delightful impression..”

There was magic spun from Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir led by distinguished conductor Karen Grylls in their concert at St Matthew-in-the-City in Auckland, NZ last night. A midwinter Yulefest celebrating Christmas with music from both northern and southern hemispheres including a significant number of NZ composers. The theme for the selection was Follow the Star, the North Star leading the Wise Men to the nativity and the stars of our very own star cluster Matariki.