Keith Statham: ...of wine and roses

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The debut CD of music by a composer in his late 70s doesn’t happen every day, but Atoll Records have released ...of wine and roses — a collection of chamber music pieces by septuagenerian Auckland- based composer, Keith Statham.

“I’d written a lot of theatre music in the past, particularly during my student days in the 1950s at Cambridge, and later orchestrations and arrangements of other people’s work, but nothing as personal as the music I started to write a decade ago in the peace and quiet of life in suburban Auckland,” Statham said, “It’s a sort of retrospective view of my musical experiences and unashamedly easy-listening, somewhat wistful, and melodic. The title of the CD (reflecting my advancing years) comes from a line (“They are not long, the days of wine and roses:”) in a poem by the 19th century English poet, Ernest Dowson.”