Recontextualising a singing treasure: Eve De Castro-Robinson’s Clarion

This paper is partially presented as a personal narrative or piece of autoethnography. What follows is an account of how I came to commission a new trumpet concerto by leading New Zealand composer Eve De Castro-Robinson’s for trumpet and pūtātara (name given to a conch shell adapted with a wooden mouthpiece by the Māori people). Over the past four decades traditional Māori instruments from New Zealand (called taonga pūoro or ‘singing treasures’) have had a major revival in the hands of musicians, scholars and instrument makers. The writing considers what I feel to be the ethical considerations of playing a when I myself am Pākehā (of European descent).