Джек Боди: Композитор, этномузыковед и противоречивая фигура в новозеландской культуре.

NZ composer, ethnomusicologist, photographer and teacher (1944–2015)

John Stanley Body (7 October 1944 – 10 May 2015) was a New Zealand composer, ethnomusicologist, photographer, teacher, and arts producer. As a composer, his work comprised concert music, music theatre, electronic music, music for film and dance, and audio visual gallery installations. A deep and long standing interest in the music of non Western cultures – particularly South East Asian – influenced much of his composing work, particularly his technique of transcribing field recordings. As an organiser of musical events and projects, Body had a significant impact on the promotion of Asian music in New Zealand, as well as the promotion of New Zealand music within the country and abroad. In November 2020, Body's status as an Arts Icon was suspended by the Arts Foundation following allegations that Body had sexually abused male students at Victoria University.

Jack Body was born 7 October 1944 in Te Aroha, a town in the North Island farming district of the Waikato. Both parents came from farming families; his father, Stan, was an earthmoving contractor. Seeing his older sisters take piano lessons, Body convinced his parents to let him follow suit, and began piano lessons from William Cranna, a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and employee of the local power board. Body's first composing efforts as a child were re composing his prescribed Royal Schools exercises and performing them at end of year piano recitals in the local church hall. Body attended secondary school as a boarder at King's College, Auckland. There, his interest in both music and painting was kindled amidst the school's dynamic musical life under the leadership of music teacher L C M Saunders, with whom Body took piano and organ lessons. On completing secondary school, he applied for the Elam School of Fine Arts but instead chose to study music at the University of Auckland, beginning a Bachelor of Music in 1963. At that time composition was not offered as a course of study at an undergraduate level; nevertheless, Body composed prolifically during his undergraduate years. While studying at the University of Auckland, Body also took organ lessons with Peter Godfrey and sang in the choir of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Parnell. In 1965 he was appointed organist and choirmaster of St. Aidan's Anglican Church in Remuera. After graduating his BMus with first class Honours, Body began his Masters of Music in 1966, studying composition with Ron Tremain in his first year and Robin Maconie in his second. He completed his MMus, along with an additional teaching degree, in 1967. As a postgraduate student, Body began corralling artists and musicians for events and projects. A considerable crowd of avant garde Auckland artists gravitated around his Birdwood Crescent flat in Parnell. In 1967, while president of the New Zealand Chapter of ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music), Body organised a festival called Aucklanders and the Arts in the University of Auckland Student Union Building. At the end of 1977, Body and Soekarno returned to Wellington, where Body worked as a freelance composer while tutoring at Victoria University and running workshops in secondary schools. 1980 saw the retirement of Douglas Lilburn as composition professor at Victoria University (now the New Zealand School of Music); Body applied for and was offered the position. Body remained on the composition faculty of Victoria University until his retirement in 2009.

Body's earliest works, such as choral pieces Ave Maria Gratia Plena (1965), People Look East (1965), and Carol to St. Stephen (1975) reflect Body's early training as a church musician. His travel to South East Asia in the early 1970s, where he encountered local musical traditions, significantly re formed his compositional language. Many of Body's works are scored for both Western and non Western instruments such as gamelan, sheng, and gangsa. Resonance Music (1974), for electric guitar and 6 percussionists, features gamelan; its premiere by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation Symphony Orchestra made first use of the set of gamelan gifted to the orchestra in May 1974 by the Indonesian ambassador to New Zealand. Field recordings made by Body in South East Asia formed the source material for many of his electronic and electro acoustic pieces, such as Musik Dari Jalan (1975), Musik Anak Anak (1978), Fanfares (1981), and Interior (1987). Intimate Histories no. 1 (2005) features a personal oral history of Yono Soekarno, Jack's partner, coloured by field recordings which Body made in Soekarno's Indonesian hometown in 1977 and 1988. As well as creating tape pieces from these field recordings, Body also developed a process of 'double transcription', which he described as transcribing the essence of the musical source in the recording in such a way that would be playable by Western musicians. In addition to concert music, Body composed prolifically for screen. He wrote the theme music for television drama The Longest Winter (1974), New Zealand's first Māori language TV drama Uenuku (1974), and New Zealand's first soap opera, Close to Home (1975). Body's first feature film soundtrack was for Vincent Ward's Vigil (1984). Body co wrote with John Gibson the soundtrack to another Ward film, Rain of the Children (2008). Body was also an active art photographer, though untrained, whose unconventional work was shown in several New Zealand galleries. The Male Nude Series (1983) featured male nudes in vibrant colours, created through manipulations of the film negatives. Using a scalpel, nail file, felt tip pen and even ball point pen, Body worked the images by scratching and re colouring to evoke a painterly quality. The audio visual installation Runes (1984), commissioned by the Wellington Art Gallery, juxtaposed re coloured photographs of graffiti in public toilets with recordings made in toilets of running water.

Besides his work as a composer, Body's activities as an ambitious organiser and curator of musical events made an enormous mark both on New Zealand's composing community as well as on the cultural life of the country. Some of Body's earlier projects were the Sonic Circuses, the first of which took place in Wellington in March 1974, commissioned by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and the New Zealand Students' Arts Council. Loosely inspired by John Cage's Musicircus, the 6 hour plus event featured New Zealand music performed across eight different venues within the Victoria University Student Union building. A second Sonic Circus followed in 1975. In late 1974 Body assisted ethnomusicologist Allan Thomas in bringing from Cirebon, West Java to New Zealand the country's first set of gamelan. Body later managed the Victoria University Gamelan Padhang Moncar (gamelan orchestra) for many years, during which time he commissioned several new works for the gamelan orchestra. Also while on the composition faculty at Victoria University, Body established a residency inviting musicians from regions in South East Asia (among others, West Java, Bali, Kalinga, and Minangkabau) to work closely with the university's performers and composers. The year 2000 saw the 25th anniversary of Gamelan in New Zealand; to mark the occasion, Body co organised BEAT, an international gamelan festival with over 100 international participants. Body founded the Nelson Composers' Workshop in 1982, an ongoing annual gathering of young, emerging and established New Zealand composers where new works are performed and critiqued. He was artistic director of Asia Pacific Festivals & Conferences in 1984, 1992, and 2007: ten day events juxtaposing traditional and contemporary music of New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region. In 2002 he curated a series of five concerts of New Zealand music at the Ijsbreker in Amsterdam.

CD Title Works featured Label Adrianna Lis: Rozmowa / Dialogue Rainforest Atoll Records, ACD742 Darkness to Light: An Easter Celebration Pange Lingua Flight: music for flute and harp Rainforest Atoll Records, ACD709 Henry Wong Doe: Landscape Preludes The Street Where I Live Rattle Records, RATD046 Jack Body: Poems of Love and War Alley, Meditations on Michaelangelo, My Name is Mok Bhon, Palaran: Poems of Love & War, Poems of Solitary Delights Naxos, 8.573198 Jack Body: Songs of Death & Desire Songs of Death & Desire Atoll Records, ACD414 Jack Body: Pulse African Strings, Campur Sari, Melodies for Orchestra, Pulse, Three Transcriptions Rattle Records, RAT D009 Jack Body: Suara – Environmental Music from Java Ode Records, Ode CD MANU 1380 New Zealand Choral Music People Look East Kiwi Pacific Records, CD SLD 108 New Zealand Music for Creative Dance (Volume Two) Three Transcriptions Cossey/Atoll Records New Zealand National Youth Choir: Te Roopu Rangatahi Waiata o Aotearoa Carol to St. Stephen Ode Records, Ode Manu 1412 New Zealand String Quartet: notes from a journey Three Transcriptions Atoll Records, ACD 118 Now I Know: New Music for Gamelan and Winds Polish Folk Dances New Zealand School of Music / Gamelan Padhang Moncar & Gamelan Taniwha Jaya NZTrio & Tray So: O Cambodia O Cambodia Atoll Records, ACD 541 Pink and White: New Zealand Organ Music Tui, korimako and kokako Atoll Records, ACD 605 Ritual Auras: Karlheinz Company Interior Atoll Records, ACD 842 Sacred and Profane: compositions for voices by Jack Body Invocation, Song Cycle, Vox Humana Ode Records / Portal CDs, Portal CD 1003 The Tudor Consort: The 'Earthquake' Mass Psalm 137 Tudor Consort / Organism, ORG007 Under the Southern Cross: works for cello Aeolian Harp Ode Records, Ode Manu 1543/4 Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 1: A Violin and Piano Recital Aeolian Harp Watieata Music Press, Waiteata CD WTA001 Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 6: Composer Portrait: Jack Body Five Lullbies, Flurry, Four Stabiles, Little Elegies, Love Sonnets of Michaelangelo, Three Old Fashioned Songs, Three Rhythmics Waitaeata Music Press, Waiteata CD WTA006 Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 13: NZ Piano Music for 4 Hands Three Rhythmics Waiteata Music Press, Waiteata CD WTA013 You Hit Him He Cry Out: Dan Poynton Five Melodies Rattle Records, RATD006