Generous couple support musicians
Philanthropists Ian and Agi Graham support popular Waikato musicians in memory of Ian's late mother
Former Waikato students may well remember Professor Ian Graham (pictured left with his wife Agi), perhaps as a lecturer or supervisor in Computer Science, or striding out on campus, off to a meeting or heading to his home on Hillcrest Rd. These days when he’s on campus you’re more likely to see Ian in the Academy’s Gallagher Concert Chamber.
He and his illustrator wife Agi are regular attendees at lunch and evening musical performances. And for the past four years they have given substantial financial support to the New Zealand Chamber Soloists, a group of musicians taking chamber music to the provinces of New Zealand and concert chambers around the world.
Ian retired from the University in 2004 but not to put his feet up; far from it. The academic turned his hand to business and founded Endace Measurement Systems, a company that makes computer network intrusion detection systems.
Endace grew from small beginnings at the University of Waikato. Ian was head of Computing and Mathematical Sciences and was working with a group of students on a product that could “listen in” to computer networks – to monitor network traffic and capture and analyse the data passing through. Convinced he had a product he could take to market, Ian brought in Waikato Management School adjunct professor Neil Richardson and businessman Selwyn Pellett. “This was post 9/11 and everybody was wanting network security and intrusion detection systems.
“We started off intending to build the equipment to do the measurements, but realised we had the potential to do more than that and by 2000 we had quite a lot of people who were using the equipment that we designed in Hamilton and had built in Australia,” Ian says.
By 2004, Endace was New Zealand’s fastest growing exporter and today it has 135 staff and offices in Washington DC, Reading in the UK, Singapore, Auckland and Hamilton, and the business is listed on London’s AIM. Ian still does a lot of travelling for the business and up until March last year, worked full-time for Endace. He still chairs the company and works four days a week on technical projects in Hamilton, where most of the research and development is done. But he has more free time than he used to.
“I was at the University for 18 years and had been thinking about how I could give something back.
“One afternoon I was listening to the radio and Katherine Austin from Waikato’s Music Department was being interviewed. She was talking about the New Zealand Chamber Soloists - where different musicians, all with some connection to Waikato, come together to play chamber music as well as carrying on with their solo careers, teaching and performing.
“During the interview I received a phone call to say my mother had died. Later, Agi and I talked about doing something in my mother’s memory. We’d done well out of Endace and we decided the Chamber Soloists would benefit from our support. So it all fell into place.”
With pianist Katherine Austin, fellow Music Department staff members cellist James Tennant and violinist Lara Hall are the key members of the New Zealand Chamber Soloists. If works require a different combination, they call in other musicians.
This year they’ve been on the road, taking chamber music to smaller New Zealand centres and larger towns. Last year they went offshore to perform in Europe, the US and Columbia, South America. Ian says the trio invokes some strong reactions with their interpretation of some works and that’s fun to see.
Says Katherine: “The funding from Ian and Agi Graham truly launched the New Zealand Chamber Soloists as a Waikato-based and New Zealand entity.” A CD titled ‘Elegy’ is about to be released featuring works with an elegiac context by Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, and Armenian composer Arno Babadjanian, which are the works they toured in Europe and the States last year.
“Their funding has enabled us to undertake many exciting projects which would otherwise have been virtually impossible. There are two more CDs in the pipeline, one a special recording of Haydn’s Flute trios and another of Eastern European works.”
The Graham's sponsorship also enabled the completion of the CD ’Ahi‘ featuring the Ogen Trio (Dimitri Atanassov, James Tennant, Katherine Austin) with members of the NZ Chamber Soloists (David Griffiths, Peter Scholes - and of course James and Katherine), which was a finalist in the Vodafone NZ Music Awards earlier this year.
“Our tour to Europe and America last year was again due to Ian and Agi’s sponsorship,” says Katherine. The piano trio played in Paris, London, Cambridge UK, Dublin, Killorglin, Michigan USA, and Bogota, Colombia.
“We were bowled over by the response. We received standing ovations in every centre we played in. A number of people came to us after the concert still weeping, many saying they had never heard this music sound so vital and so deeply moving. In Cambridge, the Israeli professional musicians in our audience came to ask us about our 'obvious Jewish heritage' and how did we come to be in New Zealand! When they heard we were not Jewish they said, 'well how is it you get to play like this, so original, and as if you own the music, it is yours'.
“And we said we think it is because we live in New Zealand where the air is clear, the soil is fresh, everything is vibrant, and we are not pulled back by the heavy sense of tradition and the expectation that you must do everything the way everyone before you has done it.”
Says James Tennant: “We respond to music as it communicates to the heart and soul and life.
Click here to learn more about the New Zealand Chamber Soloists