Low winter sun has found its way into Nadia Reid’s Dunedin home.
As she moves to her right it slides against the movement to fall across two-thirds of her face. Then as she leans back into the centre of the video-call window, she’s back in relative shadow.
It plays like a neat metaphor for recent years. Lockdowns, periods when the stage lights blinked on, then empty stages and hush again.
There are many with claims on the difficulties Covid has brought. But performers definitely rate a mention.
However, there’s something indefatigable about Nadia Reid. Maybe it’s because when you have a voice like hers, songs like hers, there’s a certainty about the carnival’s return.
And this coming week when the stage lights find her again, the illumination will be amplified by others.
Reid’s kicking off a trio of shows with chamber music group the NZ Trio, taking in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington, before a show with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra up north.
"It feels surreal to be going on tour for many reasons," Reid says, "to be touring with the NZ Trio and then my Auckland show with the APO — it is kind of a dream and a milestone I’ve had there for a while — then emerging out of quite a slow year with a further lockdown."
Getting back out on the road is another sort of milestone for the singer-songwriter, because between her last gig and the one next week she’s been busy with other things.
That last gig, also at Dunedin’s Glenroy Auditorium towards the end of May last year, is firmly fixed in her memory.
"I was probably a little bit too pregant," she recalls wryly. "My last Dunedin show, it was the last show of the run and I was definitely at my limit.
"A little too pregnant actually," she says again, as if to herself.
"But I was proud of that."
It was only a month later the baby arrived.
"I was really proud of the fact that I did that and those shows were some of the best I had ever played, I think, because they were so focused and I was determined for it to happen."
There were lessons to carry forward from the experience. Among them, that pregnancy affects lung capacity.
"I actually had to warm up for the first time. I would be warming up for 45 minutes to an hour before each show. I am going to start doing that now. I have to live like an athlete now, I have to think of the voice as a tool and look after it. Singing while pregnant taught me that because you lose room and you have to work a lot harder."
Motherhood has clearly been a good way to fill a tricky 12 months.
"It has been wonderful. I was, in my mind, thinking ‘when she is 3 months old I will be doing this, I will be doing that’ and of course we were put into that lockdown ... and it will be exactly a year when I start this tour and I am really grateful for that because otherwise I would have just been dragging her around everywhere, Australia and England.
"Actually, we were planning to go to England with her at 8 weeks old and I am kind of grateful that I did get forced to slow down. It has been a wonderful experience and far better than I imagined — or people had warned me about."
Reid credits her husband, Asta Rangu bassist Angus McBryde, with the idea of teaming with the NZ Trio. They had been trying to think about how Reid could do something in this year between records that would be both interesting for her audience and attract new listeners.
The trio fitted that bill, and appealed as another opportunity to mix contemporary and classical.
"I did a show a few years ago with the APO and I really enjoyed just being able to be a singer, and have an Adele moment," she says.
The set list for the coming shows has been designed to make the best of the opportunity, drawing from Reid’s three albums. Young New Zealand composer Alex Taylor has written the arrangements for the NZ Trio shows, having worked with the trio before.
"I have never had a piano player, so that’s going to be a real treat," Reid says.
Reid’s band will be on hand too, guitarist Sam Taylor providing his trademark improvised washes of sound.
Some of the songs that have featured strings prominently in past recordings make the cut, among them Get the Devil Out, which is being planned for just cello and voice.
Best Thing with its rich string outro is another strong contender for the NZ Trio treatment.
"In our discussions we really wanted to have moments where we really showcased the trio and showcased the voice and the band. So I think there will be a nice mixture of textures."
And there will be new songs.
A good start has been made on album No 4, but Reid’s reluctant to talk about timelines.
Before a new disc sees the light of day there are plans to head back to the UK, in February to tour, then to base herself there for a bit.
She nominates 2023 as the date for that next album but sounds less than bound to certainty.
"I don’t want to make any promises," she says.
Indeed, she confesses that these difficult years haven’t been a wellspring of inspiration for her.
Some people used lockdown time quite wisely, she observes.
"I wasn’t one of them."
For an artist with something of a rep for creative entrepreneurialism, the next admission is a little surprising.
"I have been grappling with a little bit of productivity guilt. But that is just the way I have survived this experience — by just kind of going inward, almost in a kind of survival mode. I think a lot of it is bubbling underneath and I think I am about to come into a period of writing.
"I am ready for it to hurry up."
So, new beginnings, the timing seems propitious hot on the heels of Matariki.
"I treat it like going back to work, in a way," Reid says, radiating the quiet confidence of the seasoned professional. "Because I do feel very fulfilled when I am performing. It gives me a great sense of purpose I am very grateful for and do not take for granted."
The show
- Nadia Reid, with the NZ Trio, Glenroy Auditorium, Dunedin, Thursday.
