Contributor
Norman Meehan
Composer, Jazz Composer, Performer
Biography
Norman Meehan is a New Zealand composer and performer. A well-established and active jazz pianist, Norman has performed original music at festivals and in concerts throughout the country and in Europe. His album Modigliani (Ode, 2007) was nominated for Best Album in the New Zealand Jazz Awards in 2008.
Since 2008 his primary musical focus has been setting poetic text as song. This work has seen him complete six albums featuring his settings of texts by poets including e. e. cummings (sun, moon, stars, rain, Attar Music, 2009) and Bill Manhire (Buddhist Rain, Making Baby Float, Rattle Records, 2010, 2011). The book and CD set These Rough Notes (VUP, 2012), a meditation on Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, featured the poetry of Bill Manhire and the photographs of Anne Noble. A subsequent book and CD set Tell Me My Name (VUP, 2017) features riddles and charms prepared by Bill Manhire and the photographs of Peter Peryer. Small Holes in the Silence (Rattle Records, 2015) includes settings of a number of significant New Zealand poets including Manhire, James K. Baxter, Hone Tuwhare, Eileen Duggan, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and David Mitchell. All of these albums feature performances by Norman on piano with Wellington-based vocalist Hannah Griffin, and their work together is documented in the film Persuading the Baby to Float (Attar Media, 2012).
As a concomitant to his composition and performance work, Norman is the author of two books focused on New Zealand music: Serious Fun: The Life and Music of Mike Nock (Victoria University Press, 2010), an accessible biography of one of New Zealand’s greatest musicians; and New Zealand Jazz Life (Victoria University Press, 2017), which surveys the vibrant local scene and draws from interviews with many of New Zealand’s leading jazz musicians.