Finalist in the 2022 New York Festivals Radio Awards.

The Magpie House is the story of the modernist, black and white house at 22 Ascot Street, Thorndon, Wellington, where composer Douglas Lilburn lived for more than 40 years.   

Lilburn was the father of classical music composition in Aotearoa and today the house is a composers' residency.

In this four-part series, Kirsten Johnstone weaves together stories of seven colourful decades in the Magpie House creating a Forrest-Gump-esque saga of war and music, cold-war espionage and persecution, the search for identity and a place to call home.

The first episode will be released on Monday 22 November 2021. Subscribe to be notified when it is available.

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Podcast Series: The Magpie House

Off a bustling Wellington city thoroughfare there's a quaint, narrow lane called Ascot Street, where sits a modernist house whose tar black weatherboard and stark white trim inspired the name ‘the Magpie House’. Out back, lies an overgrown jungle of a garden where New Zealand’s ‘father of classical music composition’ Douglas Lilburn, who lived in that house for over forty years, liked to spend time growing vegetables and listening to the calls of the Tūī. 

In this four-part series, host Kirsten Johnstone delves into the colourful legacy of the Magpie House and its inhabitants, weaving their intriguing—and often surprising—stories into a Forrest-Gump-esque saga of war, music, cold-war espionage, persecution, and the search for identity and a place to call home.

© Centre for New Zealand Music Trust

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