MOLLER, STEPHANIE (b. 1975)

Composer Stephanie Moller was born in 1975 in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her father, an immigrant to New Zealand, is of Indian-Danish-Nepalese descent, while her mother, a Kiwi, came from Invercargill, a city at the bottom of South Island. There were no opportunities for her to learn music in her childhood and so when she tried to join a school choir, she was turned down and received no encouragement to pursue music. It wasn't until she was in her early twenties while attending Hagley Community College, that she began engaging in music. Stephanie joined a choir under Rosemary Turnbull who later gave her voice and piano lessons.

 

However, it was a karaoke experience which led to her being "discovered" and resulted in her starring as Mary in Jesus Christ Superstar with the Riccarton Players. Other events intervened in her life and so she left Hagley but returned when she was thirty years of age. In addition to singing, she began piano, music, reading and theory studies. Leaping in the deep end, her actual first piece of study was Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata which she played from memory.

 

While a music student at Hagley Community College, Stephanie Moller was awarded the Professor Frank Callaway prize for music. In 2008, she arranged her piece, A Long Way from Home for Sinfonia, an orchestra at the Christchurch School of Music under the guidance of Neville Forsythe. She also performed "Thank You," a work for voice and computer, as a gift to the college to express her gratitude for what she had been taught and for the opportunities the college had given to her.

 

Stephanie continued her composition studies at the University of Canterbury under Associate Professor Chris Cree-Brown, Dr. Gao Ping and Iain Brandram-Adams. Compositionally, she has focused on creatin music for brass, flute and classical guitar.

 

Stephanie's music has been described as "a kaleidoscopic journey through fascinating realms of harmony with original rhythms assisting in producing a sense of freedom and space." (Brandram-Adams, 2012)

 

Stephanie Moller is fascinated with the science of sound and how music can move people in the way it does. She desires to be a part of that experience creating music that can change people's lives whether it be through physical vibrations, and/or storytelling. She believes that music has the potential to bring about a mutual, universal understanding of the human condition and is eager to make connections with others through its language.

 

"Calling to You" was composed in collaboration with Roger Buckton (flute) and Kim Rockell (classical guitar) who together form the duo, Black Orpheus. The work was first performed by Black Orpheus in a library concert in Parklands, an area of Christchurch which had been badly affected by earthquakes in 2012.