New Zealand

"Created in New Zealand, heard around the world!" is the vision of SOUNZ, the Centre for New Zealand Music. Services and projects based around the largest accessible collection of New Zealand music in the world means that SOUNZ plays an important role in the promotion and dissemination of music by New Zealand composers.

Services are supported by expert staff who are able to reveal the wealth of NZ music to performers and broadcasters. The SOUNZ website has a searchable database and the Centre sells more than 2,000 different scores, recordings and publications. The library at SOUNZ contains more than 6,000 scores and recordings and information about more than 8,500 works by nearly 300 composers is documented on the Centre's database.

As well as "one-off" projects, the Centre undertakes many regular activities. These include orchestral readings of NZ music, administration of the annual SOUNZ Contemporary Award celebrating the best of recent composition, education guides for schools, the SOUNZ Community Commission which brings community musicians into contact with professional composers, and SOUNZfine promotional CDs which encourage the broadcast of NZ music.

In 2007 SOUNZ hosted the IAMIC Conference in Wellington, the cultural and political capital of New Zealand. They also launched a new website featuring dynamic linking of information about composers and the myriad facets surrounding their works, including score and audio samples of thousands of these works, and enhanced ecommerce giving anyone ANYWHERE easier access to the rich diversity of this country's music.