Music Industry News

SOUNZ Toi te Arapūoru and Southern Jam Youth Jazz Festival are thrilled to announce Callum Allardice and Jasmine Lovell-Smith as the two composers selected for the SOUNZ | Southern Jam Commission. This new commission funded by the Nicholas Tarling Charitable Trust allows two jazz composers to write new works for performance by the All Stars Band at this year’s Southern Jam.

Guitarist and composer Callum Allardice will write 16th Note Funk, a work informed by his time teaching at Te Kōkī – the New Zealand School of Music. Taking its base materials from a straight sixteenth-note groove that introduces common rhythms of the funk style, the work will allow the young performers to improvise over varied chord qualities within a single scale, helping them to develop their stylistic awareness and improvisational skills. “I’m very honoured and super excited for this particular commission,” Callum says. “I attended Southern Jam three times when I was in high school, so it’s a real privilege to have this opportunity.”

Morelia, Mexico-based saxophonist and composer Jasmine Lovell-Smith plans to compose medium-tempo swing blues Windfall. Her new work will feature cumulative layering of riffs from the saxes, trumpet and trombone sections. The work will draw inspiration from composers such as Duke Ellington, Henry Mancini and Oliver Nelson, creating a colourful and atmospheric sound world that is firmly rooted within the jazz tradition. On receiving this commission, Jasmine says, “I’m thrilled to receive this commission, and am really looking forward to composing a new jazz work for an all-star high school band. Initiatives like the SOUNZ | Southern Jam Commission are really important for supporting New Zealand jazz composers to develop new work. As a kiwi jazz composer based in Mexico, I’m looking forward to connecting with the New Zealand jazz education community through this project, and to creating a new work for the upcoming generation who will shape New Zealand’s jazz scene.”

The two composers were chosen from a competitive field of 30 proposals from 16 New Zealand composers. The selection panel was led by American bassist, composer, and educator Dr Molly Redfield, alongside New Zealand-based Southern Jam team members Daniel Hayles and Dave Wilson.

“It has been an honour to serve on the selection committee for the 2026 SOUNZ | Southern Jam Commission,” panel chair and Director of Jazz Studies at Folsom Lake College, California, Dr Redfield says. “I was highly impressed by the quality of writing from New Zealand composers and the musicianship demonstrated on the recordings. Great things are happening in the jazz scene in Aotearoa, and I look forward to hearing the commissioned works.”

Festival organiser Katrina Lange-Cairns added, “Pure Events Marlborough are excited to be working with SOUNZ and delighted for the remarkable opportunity that both the successful composers and our students attending Southern Jam Youth Jazz Festival, will benefit from this collaboration. We are so looking forward to experiencing the pieces composed specifically for Southern Jam and the legacy that this will provide.”

Callum and Jasmine’s works will be premiered by the Southern Jam All Stars Band in August, giving keen young musicians the opportunity to perform brand-new music written especially for them. Following the premiere, SOUNZ will publish the works and make them available for purchase, to encourage more ensembles to perform new jazz compositions by New Zealanders. SOUNZ and Southern Jam are delighted to support two talented composers and the next generation of jazz performers through this new project and look forward to the new works being performed later this year.

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