Luka Venter, NZSO NYO Composer-in-Residence 2025

Every year the NZSO provides a young New Zealand composer with the opportunity to write a full symphonic commission. 

NZSO NYO Composer-in-Residence 2025 

LUKA VENTER is an award-winning composer, conductor, countertenor and writer from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. 

Their work explores layers of time, and the complex interconnections between contemporary society, human history, and the natural world in the Anthropocene. With a strong focus on collaboration, Luka regularly works with writers, instrumental soloists, and players of ngā taonga pūoro, and often draws musical material from ecological sources. 

A previous recipient of the NZSO Todd Foundation Young Composer Award, the Edwin Carr Foundation Scholarship, and the Freemasons Lankhuyzen/Whetu-Kairangi Music Award, Luka has an international practice spanning the creation of new works for orchestra, chamber music, and most significantly, opera. Their music has been performed and recorded, among others, by the New Zealand String Quartet and Te Tira Pūoro o Aotearoa — the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. 

2023 saw the première of Lanternfish, a new chamber opera commissioned by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in association with the Royal Opera House, and developed in collaboration with writer David Bottomley. The opera was performed at the Barbican Centre alongside the première of another new work, ULYSSES for solo baritone. The same year saw the premières of multiple other works in London, including a new work for voice and piano at St Martin-in-the-Fields, commissioned by Aotearoa-born baritone Jonathan Eyers.  

Recent commissions have included a collaboration with leading taonga pūoro practitioner Ariana Tikao and violist Sophia Acheson (NZSO). The new work, puāwai, has so far been performed in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and abroad at the International Viola Congress in Campinas, Brazil.  

Equally active as a conductor, Luka has worked with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as the assistant/cover conductor for the UK-première of George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Picture a day like this, working closely with the composer. In addition, Luka has worked with New Zealand Opera; Orchestra Wellington; and the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, and has conducted the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Zar, and Pōneke-based period ensemble The Night Watch.  

Luka is a 2023-24 Britten Pears Young Artist, and a 2024 Conducting Fellow with the NZSO. 

Luka is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Te Kōkī — the New Zealand School of Music, and the International Institute of Modern Letters. Their work has been supported by grants from New Zealand Opera, the New Zealand Opera Foundation Trust, the Todd Trust, the Deane Endowment Trust, and private benefactors. 

For further information, please contact the NZSO Education team at education@nzso.co.nz.