Alive with sound of waiata

Roys Bay at Wanaka was not only full of water yesterday, it was full of the sound of a waiata presented by international opera singer Ramonda Taleni Te Maiharoa.

She arrived in Wanaka from Brisbane yesterday to prepare for the centennial celebrations in Oamaru next month of an event connected with the ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic of Robert Falcon Scott.

At re-enactments around the Oamaru Harbour on February 6 and 10, Te Maiharoa will perform a waiata specially written by Dame Gillian Whitehead, of Dunedin.

One of the event's organisers, Bronwyn Judge, delivered the waiata to Te Maiharoa in Wanaka yesterday.

She described Te Maiharoa, of Waitaha ancestry, as a ''landscape singer'', who would use her voice to augment the natural sounds around her.

To demonstrate, Te Maiharoa performed a brief waiata amid the sound of the wind and waves beside Lake Wanaka yesterday.