Bob Bickerton has worked within the New Zealand professional performing arts industry for 50 years in a myriad of roles including as trustee, manager, audio engineer, producer, composer and performer.
After moving on from trustee and management roles, Bob is now focussed on creative exploits and in recent years has performed as a taonga puoro practitioner with Nelson Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand Composers’ Workshop and with New Zealand String Quartet in their performance of Gillian Whitehead’s Hine Pū Te Hue, which was broadcast as part of Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts in 2022 and Ngā roimata o Mānuka which premiered at the 2024 Adam Chamber Music Festival.
A specialist in traditional Celtic music, Bob first discovered the world of taonga puoro – traditional Māori instruments – when he moved to Nelson in 1987 as Director of the Nelson School of Music. It was then he encouraged Richard Nunns to deliver a workshop on these ‘singing treasures’. Bob went on to work with Richard and Aroha Yates-Smith on various projects including several film scores and with poet Glen Colquhoun and Richard Nunns in Glen’s poetry cycle North South. Following encouragement from Hirini Melbourne, he included taonga puoro in his school shows and in the last 30 years has presented the taonga to many hundreds of thousands of students around New Zealand.
Bob has collaborated with Ariana Tikao on several occasions and toured with Chamber Music New Zealand in October 2024 with their new album, Muriwai, receiving critical acclaim in the prestigious internationalSonglines magazine.
As a music creator, Bob has had songs performed and recorded internationally and has had his own recordings released on the international Naxos label. Recent projects have included music for videos, exhibitions, art projections, video games and theatre.