New Zealand January 2025
January 11-28, 2025
Rehearsal Venue: Magnificat Retreat Centre, Featherston, Wairarapa District, New Zealand
Leaders: Lala Simpson, Patty Cuyler, Matlakala Bopape
Price: US$2500 / US$2200 youth.
We will be accepting singers on a first-come, first-served basis. When registering online, choose “payment plan” at check-out to pay a 25% deposit instead of the full amount. The balance of tuition will be due on December 15.
A welcome from lead director Lala Simpson
A few years ago, I had the privilege of being interviewed by some insightful and talented third year students at Massey University and have my immigrant story shared in a short documentary alongside two other participants. The documentary has won awards and I am so proud to have been part of it all. This documentary talks about my struggles when I first came to New Zealand, it addresses racism and what I and my family had endured because of that but essentially it’s about resilience and the triumph of human kindness and the power of song and what belonging means to me. I talk about my women’s choir Kotaba Voices in this documentary as it is the choir that I formed in 2020 to fill the gap of missing singing with my sisters, my mum, my aunties, my grandmothers, my friends, a sisterhood really but, the Wellington Community Choir is also in the documentary and they sing the song that you hear. My heartfelt thanks for these two choirs who trust me to lead them and indulge me in whatever crazy idea I come up with and whatever challenging song happen to be in the repertoire we work through it together. Because of the freedom to share my songs, I feel right at home.
— Lala Simpson
Join Village Harmony at our inaugural study-performance tour in New Zealand this January. The 18 day-long program will begin with a rehearsal week in residence at the Magnificat Retreat Centre in Featherston, with a stellar team of VH teachers—Lala Simpson, Patty Cuyler & Matlakala Bopape—teaching a mixed repertoire of Malagasy, Maori, South African, American and other world musics.
Tucked away near the shores of Lake Wairarapa, the Magnificat Retreat Centre will offer us a calm sanctuary surrounded by the Rimutaka Hills. We will spend our first week not just rehearsing in this beautiful venue but visiting surrounding attractions—and singing in some truly spectacular places.
Featherston, where the retreat center is located, is the gateway to the wild stretch of cliffs, rocks and water that is Paliser Bay. It’s one of the region’s highlights with an historic lighthouse, native fur seals and the Putangirua Pinnacles, which provided an eerie backdrop in Sir Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King movie.
Once done with our rehearsal week we will enjoy New Zealand’s famous nature and hospitality to the fullest as we we will spend the next 1-1/2 weeks touring around the lower part of the North Island of New Zealand. We will be giving and attending concerts, sharing music informally, visiting churches, and meeting with indigenous tradition bearers to learn local folk dances and songs. We will visit Hawkes Bay and the Kapiti coast; and in New Zealand's capital, Wellington, we will visit Te Papa and perform on iconic Cuba Street, one of the best-known—and famously bi-cultural—streets in Wellington.
Meet our Leaders
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Lala Simpson
Lala Simpson is a vocalist, composer, and community song leader from Antananarivo Madagascar. Lala fell in love with her country’ s traditional music and dance from a very young age and started performing in with a local traditional folk Vakodrazana group at the age of 7. She is a very skilled teacher with a great sense of humour, passionate about the music and traditions of her homeland and has been given the honour of being one of Madagascar’s honorary cultural ambassador in NZ by the Malagasy ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Currently, she lives in NZ with her 3 young adult children and her husband and leads two community choirs, performs French music with her band, collaborates with other artists and community groups to organise ethnic community concerts, performs music from Madagascar, and travels around NZ leading community singing workshops.
In July of 2023 Lala organized and led Village Harmony’s first study-performance camp in Madagascar—an experience we will repeat in 2025.
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Matlakala Bopape
Matlakala Bopape, of Polokwane, South Africa, is the director of Polokwane Choral Society—a community-based group whose aim is nurturing musical talent in African society.
As a director, Matlakala is committed to drawing out musical excellence from her singers, as well as exposing them to musical cultures of the world. Her limitless patience, careful attention to vocal technique, and rich repertoire of folk and contemporary South African choral music make her a formidable teacher.
Matlakala’s first taught with Village Harmony in Italy in 2000 after a fortuitous initial meeting with Patty & Larry at Festival 500 in St. John, Newfoundland the previous summer. She has taught Village Harmony groups in South Africa, Europe and North America nearly every year sice then, to great acclaim. She is very excited to bring authentic South African choral music teaching to New Zealand.
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Patty Cuyler
Patty Cuyler, born in California, educated at Princeton University, long-time resident of Vermont and currently living in Chicago, IL, is an energetic, dynamic workshop leader and choral director and is internationally-renowned for her expertise in teaching Corsican, Georgian and South African music. She is now VH’s director after acting as the co-director since 1995.
Over the years Patty has spear-headed the expansion of the organization’s reach into the four corners of the globe.
It was also primarily Patty’s vision and labor that shaped VH’s successful response to the pandemic years, launching online programs that spanned the continents and allowing Village Harmony to maneuver a financially rocky period with aplomb.
Rehearsal venue
The Magnificat Community is based at Cross Creek, 10km from Featherston in the Southern Wairarapa. The two residences, Bethlehem and Nazareth, are on sites adjacent to each on Cross Creek Road. They are surrounded by farmland owned by the community.
Tucked away in the heart of the stunning Wairarapa, the Magnificat Retreat Centre offers a calm sanctuary surrounded by the Rimutaka Hills and Lake Wairarapa.
“Actually learning music from throughout the world shows you so many drop-dead-gorgeous singing traditions, exposes you to music that moves you down to the very marrow... and it makes you exercise so many different ways of singing that you start to figure out the ways that work best, not just the ways that you’ve always done it. It’s sort of like feeding the addiction you never knew you had-- for the chocolate that nobody else has discovered yet.”