For one night only, the powerful sound of exceptional young vocal artists performing waiata reo Māori with Auckland’s professional orchestra will fill the Auckland Town Hall for Matariki: Waiata Anthems In Concert. This landmark concert on Thursday 9 July brings the Waiata Anthems’ kaupapa together with the Auckland Phil into one of the city’s most iconic live music spaces.
This concert places te reo Māori centre stage this Matariki, transforming some of Aotearoa’s best-loved contemporary songs into a sweeping orchestral celebration.
When the original Waiata Anthems album was released in 2019, it made history, debuting at number one on the New Zealand music charts as the first 100 percent reo Māori album to do so. What began as a bold idea, inviting some of Aotearoa’s best-known artists to re-record their songs in te reo Māori, has grown into a movement spanning recordings, documentaries, live performances and new original waiata.
The concert will feature orchestral arrangements of waiata including ‘Roimata | Cry Myself to Sleep’, ‘Tēnā Rā Koe | Thank You’ and ‘I Moeroa | Woke Up Late’, alongside newly commissioned arrangements of songs by rising artists Jordyn with a Why, MOHI and Geneva AM, all performed live for the first time. The evening also features Te Kura Māori o Ngā Tapuwae Kapa Haka, adding another powerful layer of voice, movement and kaupapa.
In Auckland Philharmonia’s hands, these songs are set to expand again. The orchestra’s musicians will bring richness, tension and cinematic force to waiata that many New Zealanders already know by heart. The result promises to be an inspiring meeting of musical worlds: contemporary Aotearoa pop, te reo Māori, kapa haka and orchestral grandeur held together under the stars of Matariki.
Matariki is a time of remembrance, renewal, reflection and gathering. It asks us to honour those who came before, look to those beside us, and imagine what we want to carry forward. For Rainbow communities, those ideas are deeply familiar. So much of queer life is shaped by chosen whānau, by intergenerational survival, by remembering those we have lost, and by creating spaces where we can be fully seen.
There is something quietly powerful about hearing te reo Māori at this scale. For generations, the language was marginalised, restricted and treated as something to be hidden away. Waiata Anthems helped place it at the heart of contemporary New Zealand music, not as a novelty, but as a living, evolving creative force. Auckland Philharmonia’s Matariki concert continues that journey, giving these songs the sweep of an orchestra and the charge of live performance.
It is also a reminder of what a city orchestra can do at its best: not simply preserve tradition, but open it up, amplify it and create a shared civic moment. By bringing Waiata Anthems into the Auckland Town Hall, Auckland Philharmonia is helping turn Matariki into a night of music, memory and collective connection.
Go with friends. Go with whānau. Go ready to hear songs you know become something larger.
