Jack Body Composer Jack Body has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. "It's the human condition. We're all on death row," the 69-year-old has told the Dominion Post. Body is a composer, photographer, artist and teacher whose homage to Carmen, Dances of Desire, premiered at the Auckland Town Hall in March 2013. His own work was among that honoured by curator Samuel Holloway in After Lilburn, a nod to New Zealand's gay composers, which ran during Auckland Pride last year. Body’s work covers almost all genres and has been influenced by a fascination with the music and cultures of Asia, particularly Indonesia. He has been commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia, the NZ String Quartet, the NZ Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Orchestra, and many other groups, and has written three works for the Kronos Quartet. His opera “Alley”, based on the life of Rewi Alley was premiered to wide acclaim at the 1998 NZ International Festival of the Arts. In 2003 he was a featured composer at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and in 2004 he was honoured by a Composer Portrait concert in the NZ International Festival. In 1999 he was awarded an OMNZ for his services to music, to education and to photography, and in 2004 he was honoured by the Arts Foundation of NZ as a laureate. Read more in the Dominion Post here
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 28th April 2014 - 1:14pm