Tohu Paerunga Mahi PūoroPostgraduate Music

Post-tonal music theory

Film music studies

Orchestration studies

Brian's research interests include: Ethnomusicology, Oceania, Pacific Island, Micronesia and Indigenous musics/performance, music ecology and environment, wayfinding, Pacific history, music ethnography, sound studies, online music communities, dance, festivals, musical instruments, sound recordings, archives, repatriation and heritage, popular music and film. In 2022 Brian received a Research Excellence Award from Victoria University of Wellington. 

Andrew's research is interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of ethnomusicology and composition. His ethnomusicological work focuses on the music of Pasifika peoples, with particular interest in how notions of cultural authenticity and identity manifest in collaborative music-making—especially in contexts involving Indigenous Samoan musical practices. His compositional practice is oriented toward supporting films that foreground and elevate Pasifika narratives.

Academic Research Publications

• 2024: Book review of Yuupurnji: A Warlpiri Song Cycle for The Australian Journal of Anthropology.

• 2020: PhD thesis – Composing Identities: Charting Negotiations of Collaborative Composition.

• 2019: Journal article – Rationales in Flux: Charting transcultural Polynesian music-making processes. Perfect Beat, 19(2), 107–121.

Creative Research Outputs (Selected Compositions)

• 2026: Currently composing music for director and animator Jacob Luamanuvae-Su’a's Song of Sina series (Jacob is known for his work as a lead animator for several Hollywood blockbusters such as Godzilla x Kong (2024) and Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)).

• 2026: Composed music for the feature documentary <a

I am interested in how music and sound work against images, be they moving or not. I am interested in the new relationships that are formed when certain sounds sit against certain images. I am also interested in making music that sits somewhere in the ground between popular and experimental forms.

My research uses sound as a platform to explore the meshing of electronic music, instrumental/vocal composition, and other art forms. This interdisciplinarity extends to research into the theory and aesthetics of sound-based arts, including music, often with a strong sociopolitical and ecological dimension. The curation and presentation of contemporary electronic and experimental music is also a vital part of my research practice.

Research interests include:

• Electronic music
• Sound art
• Installation art
• Audiovisual practices
• Indisciplinary collaboration
• Instrumental/vocal composition
• Sound studies
• Art and ecology

Children of the Mist: An exploration of identitity. Early New Zealand Composers working in the Western Classical Tradition. 

This project involves the recording of three discs, one of which has already been completed and is in the editorial stage. The composers were born in New Zealand in the late nineteenth century but all travelled overseas for success in their future professional careers. A number of the manuscrupts and papers have been lodged in the Alexander Turnbull Library, but in some cases the records of their professional lives along with surviving family members remain in England. A recent discovery of several major chamber works has led to the decision to record two more discs with English colleagues. https://kathrynmosley.com/projects/spooner-mosley-duo/

Thirty two years of living in England resulted in a passion for British music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I have always tried to seek out the undiscovered gems. This led to a project with Amazing Accrington, a heritage group based in Lancashire interested in bringing an uncatalogued treasure trove of music by local composers found in the Accrington library to life. The original plans were to present the music at the Accrington festival and as part of a wider schools and community project. The discovery of music by Frank Anderson Tyrer, then a young man in Accrington, who came out to New Zealand as Head of Broadcasting and eventually became the first conductor of the New Zealand National Orchestra (NZSO today) has given me a new direction with this work. In August last year I made a recording with Graham Kennedy, Senior Technician at NZSM in the Adam Concert Room playing the earliest known piano pieces by Harrison Birtwistle, found in the box in the Accrington Library. Graham was born in Lancashire so he is very much part of this project now. The first part of this project was completed in March 2026 with the presentation in schools in Accrington, and the next part will

My research brings together a number of strands covering instrumental composition, advanced harmony, electronics and collaboration.

Particular topics include:

• Instrumental and vocal composition
• Timbrally focussed composition
• Spectralism
• Orchestral composition
• Chamber music composition
• Real-time live electronics development
• Audio software development
• Music technology
• Real-time spectral processing of audio
• Real-time granular synthesis processing
• Fast Fourier transform
• Spatial/multichannel audio
• Post-tonal music theory and analysis
• Tone clock theory
• Pitch-class set theory
• Harmonic analysis of film music
• Analysis and musicological discourse of contemporary composers, including Salvatore Sciarrino, Unsuk Chin, György Ligeti, Thomas Adès, Helmut Lachenmann, Georg Friedrich Haas, Jenny McLeod, Salina Fisher

Hamish's research interests include: embodiment studies, performance studies, piano performance, piano pedagogy, nineteenth-century music, music theory and analysis, and the theories and works of Marie Jaëll.

Hamish is currently working on a book on the musical theories and works of French pianist Marie Jaëll (1846–1925).

Much of Hamish's research explores the ways musical meanings are formed through the embodied participations of performers, listeners, and musical thinkers. Central to all his work is his conviction that we are all “performers.” Whether listening to music, performing music, or recalling music in our head, we position ourselves and our bodies in performative ways, often unconsciously. Hamish’s research covers the many different modes of embodiment through which embodiers make meaningful sense of music. Several publications explore the diverse musical experiences of embodiers of nineteenth-century piano music. This research presents evidence—from the nineteenth century to today—that imagining supplemental sound is a necessary part of performing and listening to piano music, and that imagined sounds (and real or imagined bodily exertions) are shaped not only by compositional features, but also by common techniques of illusion that pianists use in various musical contexts.