Finalist in the 2022 New York Festivals Radio Awards.

In the 1970s, Lilburn wrestles with synthesizers and other machines, and comes out victorious, composing some masterpieces of the electroacoustic medium. But then he quits. He never writes another piece. Or does he? Lilburn’s collection in the Turnbull Library contains over 1,000 files, including some rare late-life scribblings on manuscript.  

In the final episode of The Magpie House we speak to some of the people who knew Lilburn best during his last 30 years. We hear about his dying wishes for the Magpie House, and about its revival as a composer’s residence.

Host: Kirsten Johnstone

Guests: Chris Cochran, Salina Fisher, Ross Harris, Margaret Nielsen, Jenny McLeod, Jill Palmer, Dan Poynton, Gillian Whitehead

For the show website including information about the music in this podcast, please follow this link.

This series is supported with funding from Creative New Zealand.

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Podcast Series: The Magpie House

Off a bustling Wellington city thoroughfare, there's a quaint, narrow lane called Ascot Street, where sits a modernist house whose tar-black weatherboard and stark white trim inspired the name ‘the Magpie House’. Out back, lies an overgrown jungle of a garden where New Zealand’s ‘father of classical music composition’ Douglas Lilburn, who lived in that house for over forty years, liked to spend time growing vegetables and listening to the calls of the Tūī. 

In this four-part series, host Kirsten Johnstone delves into the colourful legacy of the Magpie House and its inhabitants, weaving their intriguing—and often surprising—stories into a Forrest-Gump-esque saga of war, music, cold-war espionage, persecution, and the search for identity and a place to call home.

© Centre for New Zealand Music Trust

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