Ariana Tikao to Perform at Iconic London Venue

15 July 2025

New Zealand Arts Laureate Ariana Tikao is set to play at the legendary Café OTO in Dalston on 27 July. Theo Seffusatti, co-director of Tikao’s publisher Heard and Seen, says he was honoured to facilitate the Café OTO gig, at the venue described by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore as “a clubhouse for people who love music from the margins”.

Tikao, who is from the iwi of Kāi Tahu, is one of Aotearoa’s most versatile and sought-after players of taonga puoro – traditional Māori instruments. These instruments almost died out as a result of colonisation, but have been revived over the last few decades.

Tikao has been creating her evocative and immersive music for over thirty years and has played with the likes of Marlon Williams, Alien Weaponry, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Her most recent engagement was in one of the leading roles for the world premiere of Dame Gillian Whitehead’s opera Mate Ururoa alongside Māori-American baritone David Tahere.

For her Café OTO performance, Tikao will collaborate with London’s Rothko Collective, whose motto is ‘classical music un-boringed’. They will perform award-winning composer Karl Sölve Steven’s newly commissioned works based on two of Tikao’s Māori chants: a lament and a freedom song. She will also accompany video works created by Dunedin-based Good Company Arts, led by fellow Arts Laureate Daniel Belton. Finally, she will perform pūāwai (which means ‘to blossom’) with Rothko Collective’s director Dominic Stokes. This piece was written by composer Luka Venter for Tikao and violist Sophia Acheson to play at last year’s International Viola Congress in Brazil. Tikao’s set will also include a waiata from her duo with Bob Bickerton (Muriwai) as well as improvisations and spoken word elements.

“I’m really looking forward to introducing the unique sounds of our ancestral instruments to the Café OTO community, and to sharing the new pieces that have been written specifically for the occasion. I’m also hoping to create more of an appetite for taonga puoro music in the UK, to help make space for others in the future” Tikao said.

Tikao will also appear at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford on 29 July, to build on the collaboration she began there last year. As part of her performance she will read the poem she was commissioned to write as part of the museum’s Making the Museum project, which connects important taonga (treasures) with their originating communities.

While in the UK, Tikao will be investigating further collaborative and performance opportunities, and will do some community events with the In*ter*Is*land Collective. She has received a Creative Impact Grant from Creative New Zealand, and an Outward Sound Grant from the New Zealand Music Commission for this trip.

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