Beautiful Is The Listening Ear — IVY & DYO
As part of the 2025 Dunedin Arts Festival, Beautiful Is The Listening Ear brings together Ōtepoti’s IVY and the Dunedin Youth Orchestra for a night where worlds meet and music soars.
This collaboration weaves IVY’s dynamic prog rock with the rich depth of orchestral sound, all shaped by the hands of young local talent.
Arrangements by Ōtepoti’s own Maddy Parkins-Craig and celebrated composer Anthony Ritchie promise a fresh take on IVY’s original songs, creating something both intimate and expansive
Whether you’re a familiar face or a new friend, come be part of an evening where sound and soul collide.
“We can see so many benefits, not just for us as a band, but for the DYO and for Dunedin city by collaborating on a performance like this. We aim to activate a creative and social culture that is engaged with the new wave of Dunedin sound.” say the IVY band members.
“Playing with an orchestra will be a big experience for us and is something that the big artists we look up to have done in other centres. It will be a huge learning opportunity in terms of understanding what goes into getting a piece orchestrated and how that translates to performing live with a different genre of musicians.”
The opportunity for IVY to work with locally recognised legends such as Anthony Ritchie is massive. Ritchie is a very influential classical composer and musician. To collaborate with Maddy Parkins-Craig, who will also orchestrate the IVY music (Anthony will do 1 or 2 songs and Maddy will do the remainder) is a real opportunity for IVY as she has performance experience in both classical and contemporary music as well as her composition and orchestration experience.
Orchestration of the IVY compositions will also allow the band to think bigger than just these gigs as they look to the potential to play with other regional youth orchestra’s around New Zealand.
The exposure an event like this delivers for IVY is not lost on the band, “This event would generate a huge amount of buzz around us and the local scene. Not many bands in the country, especially in our age group have ever attempted something like this. The amalgamation of the two musical genres is also something that we would love to be part of. We think that getting young people involved in collaborations like this is beneficial to try to bring attention and interest from the younger generation. We as a band do have big aims, and one is to reinvigorate and rejuvenate the Dunedin music scene by trying new things such as this. To see more youth involved in the overarching Dunedin music scene is always the goal.”
With thanks to:
Kirsten McAuley, Dunedin Youth Orchestra, VELVET the label, Dunedin Arts Festival, IVY, Maddy Parkins-Craig, Anthony Ritchie, Peter Adams, Mike Axton, Stevenson Brown Limited, Big Steam Investments Limited, Darkest Dunedin, Creative NZ Creative Communities Scheme, Ara Toi Ōtepoti, Dunedin Casino Charitable Trust, Dunedin City Council