Excerpt from Opus Orchestra's Mahy Magic programme (filmed in March 2021 in an empty hall due to Covid-lockdown). Composer Philip Norman has set poems and stories by Margaret Mahy to music. Mahy's trademark wry humour and playfulness is perfectly captured by Norman's musical settings. There is so much gorgeous humour in this music as it access a range of styles - cabaret, film noir, jazz…

“For a self-professed ‘terrible singer’,” says composer Philip Norman, “Margaret Mahy’s words skip in such immaculately patterned metres, it is difficult to believe they were not written with singing in mind. Margaret is so easy to set to music.”

Opus Orchestra musicians conducted by Peter Walls with narrators/singers Georgia Jamieson Emms and Robert Tucker.