Tami Neilson - “Kingmaker”
Live with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Recorded By Radio New Zealand at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Auckland, July 30th 2022
To be released on all Digital Platforms : July 14th 2023
Experience the magical evening when Tami Neilson premiered her cinematic album Kingmaker, bringing it to life with the soaring 80-piece Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra to a sold out crowd at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand. Recorded for broadcast by Radio New Zealand, it is now being released for her fans around the world to enjoy.
Released July 15th 2022, KINGMAKER marked Neilson’s most provocative and powerful album to date.
Fueled by the world-changing events of the previuos two years, the album’s songs expose and explode the patriarchal structures that pervade the music industry, family life, and society as a whole. While Neilson has previously explored these themes on such acclaimed albums as 2018’s SASSAFRASS! (hailed by PopMatters as “a potent social and political statement dressed up in catchy melodies and infectious choruses that sometimes belie the more serious elements taking place deep within the choruses.”), KINGMAKER draws these challenging ideas out even further, shining a dramatic musical light on what the late bell hooks referred to as “the politics of domination” that render women nameless and voiceless.
Songs like “Baby, You’re A Gun” and the cinematic title track, see Neilson giving her own resonant voice to women everywhere – to their strength, power, fierceness, and resilience in the face of structural and cultural barriers to their full participation in society.