NZSM graduate’s new work to premiere with the NZSO in July

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington graduate Jack Bewley is the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra National Youth Orchestra’s Composer‑in‑Residence for 2026. Bewley holds a Bachelor of Music with Honours from the New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī.

A highlight of his residency is the opportunity to compose a full symphonic work. New Zealanders will be able to hear this new commission, titled Pray for the wanderer, in Wellington and Auckland this July as part of the concert NYO La Mer.

Bewley—an arranger and musician originally from Whakatāne and now based in Wellington—has had his music performed across New Zealand and Australia by ensembles such as the National Brass Band, National Youth Band of New Zealand, Wellington Brass, the Arthur St Loft Orchestra, and musicians from the NZSO, Orchestra Wellington, and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

He won the Orchestra’s Choice Award at the Todd NZSO Young Composer Awards in 2019 and 2021, and was selected for the NZSO SOUNZ Composer Sessions in 2024. His past commissions include set works for the New Zealand Brass Band Championships in 2017, 2018, and 2022.

For NYO La Mer, the National Youth Orchestra will be led by acclaimed Australian conductor Dane Lam. Alongside Bewley’s new composition, the young musicians will perform Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, Claude Debussy’s La Mer, and the New Zealand premiere of Raise Hawaiki: Kealaikahiki, a tribute to the trans‑Pacific voyage of the Hōkūle’a waka from Hawai’i to Tahiti, composed by Hawaiian composer Michael‑Thomas Foumai.

Foumai’s previous works include the world premiere of Children of Gods with Maestro Lam and the Hawai’i Symphony.