An album featuring New Zealand tenor Simon O'Neill has won a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.
Simon O'Neill Photo: Screenshot NZSO/Latitude Creative
O'Neill was a soloist on the Los Angeles Philharmonic recording of Mahler's Symphony No 8, under conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
The recording, on which he sang the role of Dr Marianus, was also nominated in the Best Engineered Album, Classical category.
O'Neill was one of eight vocal soloists in the aptly-nicknamed "Symphony of a Thousand" - the work calls for massed choirs and a large orchestra - with 346 musicians taking part in the recording.
He told Afternoons host Jesse Mulligan it was recorded in the Disney hall in Los Angeles in 2019, and while the win was one item off the bucket list he was just playing his part in the greater ensemble.
"I contributed my bit to this large ensemble ... I'm over the moon, over the moon, it's just brilliant,"
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"I love it when opera ... or a classical musician is able to be put in, I guess, the limelight or celebrated in our country, because we do put out quite a few of them and I'm just so happy to be one that's got this most recent award," he said.
"We did three performances if I remember correctly, and of course LA Phil[harmoic Orchestra] is very very, you know, it's one of the great orchestras of the world, and I remember at the performance looking out and you see Hollywood stars sitting there in the audience, and you think 'oh my God, that's, that's ah, that's hilarious'.
He said he had worked with Dudamel a couple of times before, including in New York, and really the Grammy win was his.
"Whilst I'm so over the moon that the recording has won the Grammy, I think really the Grammy winner is only one person really and that's Gustavo Dudamel, who's the conductor. I think all of us are just contributors to that and I'll take that any day.
"He's one of the great young wunderkind conductors around the world, I would just love to get him down here to New Zealand to conduct our orchestras."
He described the recording as "massive".
"It's in two parts. The first part is in Latin, and the second part's in German. And the second part I particularly had quite a bit to do with. It's based on the last scene of Faust, of Faust being dragged down to the, ah, not-very-pleasant hell ... but it finishes with such elation, this symphony, it's massive. It's a massive, massive work."
Described in The Telegraph as "... the best heroic tenor to emerge over the last decade", O'Neill is the most internationally recognised New Zealand opera singer since Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Sir Donald McIntyre.
He told Morning Report last year that he was "really thrilled" to hear the album had been nominated and was extremely proud of the recording.
O'Neill's singing career began as a chorister in the New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir, of which he is now vice-patron, and continued with the New Zealand Youth Choir, he said at the time.
Speaking from Munich this afternoon having landed just 12 hours before, he is next starring in the title role of Wagner's Parcifal and will tour to Paris, America and Britain for eight months.
He had spent most of the past two years of Covid-19 in New Zealand, and would miss his family - and the avocado season.
"I'm a bit sad about it, tell you the truth, to have this great news that's sort of coupled with the sadness of leaving New Zealand for multiple months.
"People see a lot of the glamour side I guess ... in being an opera singer or an actor in these sort of things - a nice seat on the plane, and nice hotels - but ultimately you're always away from your family and from your home and that's my sadness, I guess, being away from New Zealand because I've loved being there the last two years.
"I haven't been able to perform that much but I've just loved being around with my kids and my wife."
He was excited to be working again, however.
"Because of Covid everything got cancelled for so long ... that I'm just so delighted, just so happy to be back on the horse."
The choirs in the recording are Los Angeles Children's Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, National Children's Chorus and Pacific Chorale.
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