Getting closer to the true sounds of Maori culture

Oxfordshire is not exactly short of choral conductors, but Janet Linc must be one of the busiest. She not only runs her own group, Choros, but also directs the Oxford University Press's flourishing staff choir. On top of those commitments, she also manages to maintain an active association with music in New Zealand. Meeting Janet at her North Oxfordshire home, I asked her how she became a choral conductor.

"By various devious means. I started out as a singer, an accompanist, and a teacher. I went on to do a lot of professional singing myself, mainly early music, under all sorts of conductors. But I decided that my career wasn't going to progress satisfactorily in that direction so I went on a couple of summer choral conducting courses and thought: I must do this'."

But working under "all sorts of conductors" is surely the very best form of training, that way you can discover what to do, and what not to do, without being in the firing line yourself.

"Absolutely. I'd learnt, for instance, that losing your temper is probably the worst thing a conductor can do. You can make any number of technical mistakes, and people will accept that it's just a mistake. But if you lose your temper, you immediately put their backs up. So you don't do it, you try and keep control."

And picking out a single individual at rehearsal, who perhaps isn't singing quite in tune, surely that isn't a good idea either?

"If you know your singers very well, and it's just a small number of really good friends, like we have in Choros for example, you can jokingly say: I know that's the note you always get wrong', but on the whole, you don't pick people out."

While studying and working as a singer in London, Janet met New Zealander Cilla Askew. They worked together as singers and teachers and became very good friends.

"She lived very close to me," Janet explained. "She lived in Peckham and I lived in New Cross. Then she went back to New Zealand after ten years in England. We said goodbye, and promised to come and visit, as you do. For three years we didn't get around to it, and then, by some chance, I inherited £1,000 from one of my aunts. I wondered what to do with the inheritance and thought: Yes, the fare to New Zealand!

"I got in touch with Cilla and asked her if she knew of any choir in New Zealand who might welcome the chance to work on a workshop with an English conductor. So in 1998, my partner and I went and I met three conductors. From there everything just mushroomed."

Perhaps the stereotype image of New Zealand music is of a group of fearsome-looking Maoris in traditional dress, fiercely chanting, with their tongues hanging out.

"In a way, some of the Maori groups perpetuate that idea because they sing some of their glorious 19th-century harmony and it's all very jolly. The music has been influenced by the other Polynesian cultures, which have a strong presence in New Zealand.

"These cultures are very much into hymn singing in church, and there is a strong relationship between their kind of singing and the music that some of the modern Maori groups sing.

"But the original Maori music was a totally different thing, a totally different sound. It was based on very different aspects of their lives, for instance, the look of the landscape and the relationship between the people and what they see and the gods that they ascribe to the landscape.

"So a lot of the music that they sing is all about the relationship between a particular mountain and the sea, or between the sky and a certain lake - the god of the sky will make something happen with this lake. It's all interconnected in this way and it's very atmospheric."

I said to her that the description of Maori music at once reminded me of Vivaldi: I always seem to hear the sound of waves lapping in the Venice lagoon and the gentle clatter of gondolas rattling at their moorings.

"Absolutely. Certainly with the old Maori music there is a very strong connection with the feeling of sitting by a lakeside, with mist swirling over the water. There's lots of that in the sounds you hear. There are sounds of the sea too, for instance the sea at the bottom of the country, between the South Island and Stewart Island."

Just over a year ago, Janet arranged a UK tour for the Graduate Choir of New Zealand and its Oxford concert was a highly invigorating occasion. Now she is introducing her own Oxford-based Choros group to New Zealand's musical heritage, in a concert entitled Lovesong of Rangipouri. The concert will offer a rare chance to hear some New Zealand choral music (some for the first time in the UK), contrasted with some gems of English Tudor music by Byrd and Tallis.

How easy has it been to introduce her British singers to New Zealand music?

"I wouldn't say it has been easy. The main thing has been that two of the pieces we are doing have Maori in them. We have had to learn how to pronounce the Maori well because that has a very strong influence on the sound that you make. But, fortunately, we have a New Zealander singing with us, who has a strong knowledge of the Maori language. He will be singing the solos, and he has been training us in the correct sound. I am very encouraged - and we have got some conch shells too, which will be played to add authenticity."

Choros sing English Tudor music by Byrd and Tallis, together with New Zealand choral music, in Exeter College Chapel, Oxford, tomorrow, at 8pm. Tickets from 01869 232618, or email, info@choros.org, or on the door.