Music

Christchurch City Libraries has more than 15,000 CDs, tapes, LPs and DVDs as well as thousands of music scores, music magazines and online music pages.

New Zealand music

Māori Music

Learn about traditional Māori music.

New Zealand’s musical heritage

Our heritage resources about music: a Christchurch music timeline, articles about early New Zealand music and more.

New Zealand Music Month

Christchurch City Libraries celebrates New Zealand Music Month by hosting a wide variety of local musicians in our libraries during May.

New Zealand’s National Anthems

God Defend New Zealand and God Save The Queen.

Ready to Roll

100 classic Kiwi music videos with a user-selected top 10, from the New Zealand Film Archive.

Christchurch music

Christchurch Music Timeline

Explore the history of Christchurch music.

Christchurch band posters from the 1980s

We’ve digitised a small collection of posters like the one shown here.

Christchurch’s music scene today

Christchurch music venues, past and present

Information about The Gladstone Hotel, The Winter Garden and The Civic of Canterbury

Profiles

Find out more about some locally produced-musicians such as Bic Runga, Anika Moa, Craig Smith, Phil Garland and more. Read Richard James’ thoughts on the changing face of the New Zealand music scene over the last 30 years and listen to some clips of his music.

Events

Classical Sparks

Find out more about this popular annual concert in Christchurch and search the catalogue for the music it has featured.

Jazz and Blues Festival

Find out more about the annual jazz and blues festival held in Christchurch and search the catalogue for the musicians featured.

Music resources

Advert music

Some New Zealand ads and the music used on them.

Christmas music

Links and catalogue searches for Christmas music - contemporary and traditional.

Music collections at our libraries

• Classical music
• Naxos Music Library
• New Zealand music

Music on CINCH

Find musical groups and courses in Canterbury.

Music Online

Music Online include more than 235,000 tracks many different record labels, including EMI, Rounder Records, Verve, Arabesque Recordings, Smithsonian Folkways and Opus Arte. The continuously growing collection also includes thousands of liner notes, biographies, and images. Music Online brings together the entire suite of Alexander Street Press music products that we subscribe to. American Song, Classical Music Library, Contemporary World Music, and Jazz Music Library and Smithsonian Global Sound.
Access this with your library card number and PIN, or at our libraries.

Naxos Music Library

Naxos Music Library is the most comprehensive collection of classical music available online. It includes the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo catalogues of over 170,000 tracks, including Classical music, Historical recordings, Jazz, World, Folk and Chinese music. While listening, users can read notes on the works being played as well as biographical information on composers or artists in Naxos’s extensive database.
Access this with your library card number and PIN, or at our libraries.

New titles - Audio / Video

New AV titles in our libraries for the previous two months (this section includes CDs, talking books, videos and DVDs).

Oxford Music Online

Includes The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, 2nd edition.
Access this with your library card number and PIN, or at our libraries.

Music recommendations

Best Music

Your picks for 2007

Find out about the top music of 2006.

APRA Top 100 New Zealand Songs Of All Time

In 2001 the Australasian Performing Right Association invited its members and an academy to vote on New Zealand’s top songs of all time.

If you like …

Some selections of classical music.

Listener Lists 2004

10 Past Slices Of NZ Brilliance and 10 Present Acts Of Genuine NZ Class.

Top picks

Ten favourite Kiwi songs of Nemesis from Ill Semantics.

The All-TIME 100 Albums

Time magazine’s list, 13 November 2006.