31 May, 2026

Oceania’s musical heritage explored at PumpHouse

Works from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific feature in a North Shore Concert Band show in Takapuna, led by a musician who has played across the region.

Cool story… North Shore Concert Band musical director Natalie Paine with her French horn during a Defence Force visit to Antarctica

Beneath Southern Skies is the theme of the North Shore Concert Band’s annual performance at the PumpHouse this Sunday.
“I’m really excited for the concert because it’s really close to home,” says conductor and musical director Natalie Paine.
The programme, celebrating Oceania’s musical heritage, includes New Zealand works, traditional songs and hymns from across the Pacific, a few show tunes and even an Aussie classic for good measure.
During the afternoon performance a Samoan school choir will add to the live atmosphere, boosting numbers on stage to up to 40 people.
Another highlight will be the world premiere of a contemporary classical piece by Auckland composer Yvette Artley.

The band stages one big colourful show each year, along with making appearances at community events, entering competitions and visiting retirement homes. Last year’s concert had a Silk Road theme and other musical adventures have taken it on aural journeys inspired by the UK or the Americas.
For Paine – who hails from Australia but has settled on the North Shore – this year’s theme resonates more personally. With a day job as a Leading Musician in the Royal New Zealand Navy Band, she has had tours of duty in Tonga and Fiji and even a NZ Defence Force stint in Antarctica, with the southern sky a connecting umbrella.
Music offers a welcome embrace wherever you are, she says. During her five months in Antarctica last summer, she was particularly reminded of this when band members sent her recorded Christmas carols.
“People forget how important music is. It takes the absence of music for people to realise that.” She says sounds tap into universal memory. Hearing from the concert band brought a touch of home to her chilly time away.
Seconded to a Defence communications operator role on the ice, she also ensured others down there got to hear her singing and playing a French horn on Christmas Day. Not the usual highly polished one that comes out for Navy Band appearances, but instead a special plastic model she thought would better survive the rigours of extreme weather, while avoiding the risk of her fingers sticking to freezing metal.
“It definitely lifted morale,” she laughed.

Paine, who lives in Bayswater, has been a proud member of the Navy Band for seven years. But she says she loves the a added community connection and responsibility she gains from her passion project as musical director of the long-running concert band. “It’s a very friendly group, such a great community vibe,” she says. The role has also improved her musicality, she says, seeing performances from both sides.
Her husband, also a musician, was initially sounded out for the job, but he is less keen on conducting than she is, so instead she took up the challenge in 2022.
Conducting is something she first studied a little when doing a music degree in Australia, but in recent years she has been honing her craft, including with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra on a programme to develop female conductors.

The concert will be an opportunity for the audience to enjoy some unique sounds from our own region, including the Artley première. Paine’s home country gets a look in with a rendition of The Colonial Song by Percy Grainger, which she says is evocative of its vast landscapes.
She is particularly excited by tapping into Pasifika traditions, having connected with musicians intent on preserving folk sounds from Vanuatu and Tonga.
A piece composed by Queen Salote features, as does a medley march from NZ-based Sam Uatahausi.
Favourites from Fiji and Hawaii and some tracks from the musical South Pacific mix things up.
Then there’s New Zealand classics, including Tutira Mai Nga Iwi and Hine Hine.
All that is missing is music representing the Antarctica though Paine says that’s a work in progress. “I’ve got a few motifs in my head.”

• Beneath Southern Skies by the North Shore Concert Band, the PumpHouse, Sunday 7 June at 2pm. Adult tickets, $25, at pumphouse.co.nz

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