OCTOBER 2025
Otago music graduate wins 2025 SOUNZ Contemporary Award
Ōtepoti Dunedin composer Ihlara McIndoe has won the 2025 SOUNZ Contemporary Award Te Tohu Auaha, announced at the APRA Silver Scrolls ceremony on Wednesday 29 October.
OCTOBER 2025
Ihlara McIndoe Wins The 2025 SOUNZ Contemporary Award Te Tohu Auaha
SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music Toi te Arapūoru, in partnership with APRA AMCOS Te Tautāwhinga is proud to announce Ihlara McIndoe as the winner of the 2025 SOUNZ Contemporary Award Te Tohu Auaha, for her striking and evocative composition of coral and foam – a work for string quartet with live and electronic vocalisations, incorporating texts by Katherine Mansfield.
MARCH 2025
FROMM Foundation Composer Fellows for the 2025 Composers Conference announced
The composer fellows at the 2025 Composers Conference (USA) are Artur Akshelyan, Anak Bailharn, Ty Bloomfield, Cem Güven, Ihlara McIndoe, Arshia Samsaminia, Arin Shahjahanian, and Yan Ee Toh.
SEPTEMBER 2024 Interview with SOUNZ Center for New Zealand Music
Interview with SOUNZ Center for New Zealand Music, upon announcement of my work Mirror Traps as a finalist for the 2024 SOUNZ Contemporary Award, New Zealand’s premier prize for contemporary composition.
29 AUGUST 2024
Ihlara McIndoe’s Mirror Traps announced as finalist for the SOUNZ Award 2024
SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music, with APRA AMCOS NZ, is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2024 SOUNZ Contemporary Award | Te Tohu Auaha, celebrating excellence in contemporary composition:
Ihlara McIndoe for Mirror Traps
Nathaniel Otley for the convergence of oceans
Karlo Margetić for In All Directions
29 AUGUST 2024
Radio New Zealand announces SOUNZ Contemporary Award 2024 Finalists
Announcement by Radio New Zealand.
Review by Michèle Tosi.
Translated from the published French to English:
“Mirror Traps , our 2023 favorite, by New Zealander Ihlara McIndoe brings soprano Johanna Vargas back on stage and combines the harpsichord with the instrumental set. Both vocal and instrumental writing serve the expression, varying the playing techniques and vocal enunciation to make the words of poet Hera Lindsay Bird heard, with the help of the breathing and vocal participation of the instrumentalists. Emotion surfaces during the final minutes where instrumental and vocal lines blend in a space of great sensuality.”
14 SEPTEMBER 2023
ResMusica review of Voix Nouvelles Academy Concert, featuring Mirror Traps
12 SEPTEMBER 2022
Dunedin singer and composer win DMMF South Island Arts Excellence Awards
Coloratura soprano Calla Knudson and composer and musicologist Ihlara McIndoe are the winners of this year’s Dame Malvina Major Foundation Arts Excellence Awards for the South Island
Antarctic Heritage Trust invites you to watch A Musical Journey to Antarctica, featuring five compositions by Inspiring Explorer Ihlara McIndoe accompanied by stunning visuals of Antarctica captured by renowned Antarctic filmmaker and photographer Anthony Powell.
12 MAY 2022
A Musical Journey to Antarctica
30 APRIL 2022
Otago Daily Times reports ‘Concert with a difference: music evokes a land of ice’
Report by John Lewis for the Otago Daily Times.
“Bone-chilling winds, cracking icebergs, crashing waves and the squawks and roars of Antarctic wildlife are sounds not traditionally heard during classical concerts.
It will be one of the enticing features of composer Ihlara McIndoe’s upcoming concert on May 12 that will make listeners want to wear coats indoors and turn up the heating.”
2 FEBRUARY 2021
Radio New Zealand reports ‘Composer Ihlara McIndoe is going places’
Ihlara McIndoe talked with Upbeat’s David Morriss about her new role with the 2021 National Youth Orchestra, her Antarctic adventure and what motivates her as a composer.
20 JULY 2021
Five Lines review of Ephemeral Bounds
“McIndoe’s ten-minute work is wonderfully evocative of the peace and spaciousness of the Antarctic. The composer’s imaginative use of instrumental timbres and audacious approach to orchestral writing surprised, captured and entranced the large audience.”
2021
Ihlara McIndoe interview with SOUNZ on her role as Composer in Residence for the New Zealand National Youth Orchestra
“We caught up with Ihlara McIndoe, NZSO NYO Composer in Residence 2021, to talk about her new work Ephemeral Bounds, which will be performed by the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gemma New, in Auckland (July 4) and Wellington (July 11).” Read the interview here.
“…an intense, at times grungy work that questions the boundaries between human and machine. The orchestra showed impressive commitment to the wide range of sonic demands the work made of it’s players, with oboe multiphonics and the various string textures sounding with particular clarity.”
2021
Review of Dunedin Youth Orchestra’s Tāonga concert, featuring i am not made of mud or meat or music
Ihlara McIndoe. 