National Jazz Festival, Tauranga, April 7-21
This Easter weekend (April 18-21) will bring the culmination of the 62nd National Jazz Festival with some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s top jazz musicians performing in the Downtown Carnival across five ...
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News
Taite Music Prize 2025 Ceremony Finalists Announced
Independent Music NZ (IMNZ) has announced finalists for the 2025 Auckland Live Best Independent Debut Award, the recipient of the IMNZ Classic Record, and three finalists for the NZ On Air Outstanding Music Journalism Award. The awards will be presented alongside the Taite Music Prize 2025 ceremony on April 15 at Tāmaki Makaurau’s Q Theatre. The Auckland Live Best Independent Debut Award winner will receive a $2000 cash prize and technical upskilling opportunities courtesy of Auckland ...
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2025 Pacific Music Awards Entries Open
Entries for the 2025 Pacific Music Awards are now open and the Pacific Music Awards Trust is encouraging all Pacific artists who released music in 2024 to submit nominations. 2025 will be the 21st anniversary of the Pacific Music Awards, with this year’s celebration and awards ceremony being held on Thursday 21 August, at the Due Drop Events Centre in Manukau, Auckland. All entries need to be submitted online through the official entry system, with the deadline being Tuesday 15 April, 2025. Local ...
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Creative New Zealand’s long-term strategy feedback
Creative New Zealand is seeking feedback to the draft long-term strategy, Tū Mai Rā, Toi Aotearoa which sets out the vision, direction and goals for the next 15 years as the national arts development agency of Aotearoa New Zealand. The agency wants feedback on the draft strategy from anyone with an interest in the arts, creativity and ngā toi Māori. The deadline is 6 April 2025. “We’re setting ourselves a long horizon, to 2040, because we know our ambitions for the sector and ourselves ...
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Recorded Music NZ board shuffle
Recorded Music NZ has announced that Myra Hemara, currently an observer on the Board, will take Universal Music’s Threshold Director seat on the RMNZ board from the start of May 2025, following the recent announcement of longtime Universal Music NZ head Adam Holt’s retirement. Holt is retiring from his role as Chairman of Universal Music NZ from 30 April, when he will also end a 25-year role on the boards of RMNZ and its predecessor organisations. He was appointed to the PPNZ Board in 2001 and ...
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Interviews
blindr: Prize Redemption
Tāmaki Makaurau pop-punk outfit blindr have employed a fruitful blend of good fortune, music skills and good sense to produce a very good debut EP called ‘lover.fighter’. Having won a band competition in 2023 the self-managed four-piece have taken full advantage of various music professionals’ mentoring included in the prize package to record five tracks that traverse a variety of styles. They talked with Richard Thorne ahead of the EP’s release party at the beginning of March. The blindr ...
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Louisa Nicklin: Making Room To Breath
Introspective, engaging, ethereal and intimate; these are all words used to describe the first album of Tāmaki Makaurau-based Louisa Nicklin. With her second album ‘The Big Sulk’
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NewTracks New Artist: PONZ
A wicked run of new year's shows saw drum and bass artist PONZ kick off 2025 in
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Levi Patel: Finding Gravity and Voice
For the past ten years Matakana-based producer Levi Patel has shared his
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Industry: Dave Rhodes Productions
After two decades working in Auckland’s music scene as a sound engineer and producer Dave Rhodes returned to his hometown of Whitianga, established his own professional recording studio and went freelance. NZM talked with the acclaimed producer (and rock drummer) about his diverse career and what’s up next. With waves crashing in the near distance and sea salt on the breeze, there’s a sense of tranquillity at Dave Rhodes’ boutique recording studio in Whitianga. While not a typical location ...
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Fazerdaze: Fazed… But Empowered
It seems each new Fazerdaze release attracts glowing praise from major international music press, and that history is already repeating for the Auckland artist’s just-released sophomore album ‘Soft Power’. But Amelia Murray has long understood the need to ensure a measure of personal control, as with her recently created Fazerdaze Collective, a virtual workspace on Zoom where she and fans can come together, work on individual projects, collaborate and connect through live chat. Soft power it ...
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NewTracks New Artist: Just Janie
The now Christchurch-based indie folk artist Just Janie recorded her recently released country/folk single Musings in the Breakfast Aisle at Saltbox Studios as part of Ōtautahi’s 2024 OMAP programme. A vocally rich and powerful lament of indecision, the song was part of the menu on NZ On Air's February 2025 New Tracks compilation. Musings in the Breakfast Aisle by Just Janie What's your given name, where do you hail from and what instruments do you play? Janie Shaw. I was born and ...
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Event Guide
National Jazz Festival, Tauranga, April 7-21, 2025
This Easter weekend (April 18-21) will bring the culmination of the 62nd National Jazz Festival with some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s top jazz musicians performing in Tauranga, with the Downtown Carnival across five stages on The Strand, Wharf Street and Red Square. With events scheduled across Tauranga from April 7-21 including the National Youth Jazz Competition, a celebration of Rodger Fox and a NZ Army Band showcase, there’s a lot more to the annual National Jazz Festival than just that fun-filled ...
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NZ Trip Hop Show Live
Tāmaki Makaurau artist Vanessa Tottle (Radio Trip Hop Brazil) is excited to showcase a two-hour set from her hugely successful NZ Trip Hop Show at the Portland Public House on September 19. More info here, entry is free.
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Wāhine In Jazz Anniversary Party
With the second anniversary of Wāhine In Jazz 's creation looming, what better way to mark the date than to host a party! Join the team at the Audio Foundation in Tāmaki Makaurau on August 23 to celebrate. The evening will topped off with a performance from a specially curated WIJ Band, featuring; Minju Kim (tenor saxophone), Jenna Aspeling (alto saxophone), Crystal Choi (piano), Kat Tomacruz (guitar), Wren Probett (bass), Wynefred Wang (voice) and honorary wahine for the night, Maximilian Crook ...
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