STORY:
Dame Kiri Saves Gisborne Concert

Cancelled concert is back on minus David Bowie and Split Enz

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra have agreed to perform at a dawn event in Gisborne New Zealand on New Year's Day, salvaging the region's threatened millennium celebrations.

A New Year's Eve concert that was to have featured Dame Kiri, David Bowie and Split Enz collapsed a week ago due to poor ticket sales and the failure of finding a sponsor by the concert's promoter, the Year 2000 Festival Company. When no one agreed to provide the $2 million sponsorship, Bowie and Split Enz backed out. Bowie had boasted he wanted to take the stage at midnight to give the first concert of the Year 2000. He reportedly wrote a song for the occasion.

Now, a modified concert at dawn rather than midnight will take place in part to efforts by New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley. The government's lottery board will now allocate $350,000 to fund the concert. This is in addition to $1 million already allocated by New Zealand's Millennium Office to Gisborne's New Year's Eve events.

Dame Kiri would perform well-known arias and traditional Maori music with the NZSO along Gisborne's waterfront. A flotilla of Maori canoes and tall ships will enter the harbor as the sun rises. Pianist John Tesh will also perform at dawn in a separate beachside concert along the newly constructed Millennium Wall.

With the concert a go, New Zealand is assured a vital promotional opportunity by appearing in several worldwide millennium broadcasts.

Meanwhile, David Bowie and Split Enz are reportedly in negotiations to appear at a New Year's Eve concert in Auckland New Zealand at Bastion Point. Concert organizers have scheduled British rocker Portishead as the headliner, but developments in Gisborne along with Bowie's availability may change all that. Negotiations are ongoing.

DATE: 8/18/99

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