Heritage et AL

Image: Marilyn Portman behind the microphone, 2022. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections - Ngako: Podcast series. Photographer: Benjamin Brooking. Auckland Central City Library has been a vibrant venue for live music for decades. Among its most celebrated performances are the renowned Heritage Concerts, which have captivated both our local communities and daily visitors to the library. Now in its twentieth year, this beloved concert series owes much of its success to its steadfast curator, Marilyn Portman. Marilyn has been a librarian for close to 40 years, and for many of those years has specialised as a music librarian. She is a taonga - a treasured member of staff with incredible musical knowledge and many recitals and events under her belt. Recently, she shared a fond memory from the early days of the Heritage Concerts - a moment that marked the beginning of something special: “A seed was planted in 2002 when Kowhai Baroque presented ‘An Afternoon of Italian Music and Poetry’ in...

It is a unique opportunity to be able to explore and have access to the complete output of a composer’s life work. Being able to see the creative working and reworkings of their manuscript from initial inspiration through to the finished work provides a deeper understanding of them as a musician – and you can gain an appreciation of their musical life as their influence and outreach in the community becomes evident. Not to mention discovering beautiful music! In 2023, a collection was donated to Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections of the life work of composer Margaret Wegener. While she is not a widely known composer, being British born, she has an amazing story of a life filled with music which continued to enjoy even after her move to Auckland in 2005 aged 85. Margaret Wegener was born in north-west London in 1920 and began composing as a child, continuing composition into her late 80s. After studying at Maria Grey College she qualified as a teacher, eventually holding posts as D...

Auckland Libraries acknowledges the late John Eady Snr ONZM who passed away on 10 October 2017 John led the iconic Lewis Eady music business - established by his grandfather Lewis, 137 years ago - with an unwavering passion for supporting the music community in both Auckland and throughout New Zealand. He donated and loaned pianos, supported countless charitable events and emerging musicians, as well as donating the beautiful Kawai Grand Piano and large numbers of books and musical scores to the Lewis Eady Music collection at the Auckland Public Library. It is interesting to discover how a part of a library's collection originates. In the case of Auckland Libraries' music collection, it started when a visionary librarian connected with an Auckland city councillor. In 1926, Mr L. Alfred Eady, an Auckland city councillor, attended a library conference in Dunedin. There he heard Mr John Barr, Auckland’s chief librarian, speak about the need for public libraries to have mus...