Janetta McStay

McStay married Frank Newhook in 1975. She died on 14 June 2012, aged 95.

In 1991, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music by the University of Auckland.

McStay was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to music, in the 1974 Queen's Birthday Honours. She was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to music, in the 1989 New Year Honours.

She was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor in piano performance at the University of Auckland. She was a member of the QEII Arts Council Music Panel (1965–67, 1969–71, 1979–81) and the RNZ Concert Programme Advisory Committee, and was President of the Auckland Youth Orchestra (1984–98).

In 1963, McStay moved from Wellington to Auckland as the inaugural lecturer in piano at the University of Auckland Music Conservatorium. She taught there for 20 years until her retirement. Many of her students have gone on to have illustrious musical careers in New Zealand and overseas.

She toured from New Zealand to many countries including Indonesia, South Korea, Hong Kong, the Pacific Islands and Australia. In 1960, she and Frederick Page were invited by the Chinese Government to China to attend the National Day celebrations in October.

She was the featured soloist in the first NZSO Proms concert on 16 April 1955, playing Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor. In February 1956, she was among a group of the country's leading pianists who were the first to play Wellington Town Hall's new Steinway piano; she played Mozart's C minor Concerto (K491). In 1961 she played with the Berlin Chamber Orchestra, and in 1968 she played with the Borodin Quartet. She was an excellent soloist but had a special passion for playing chamber music.

In 1954, she returned to New Zealand where she took up the first of many contracts with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and began a series of nationwide tours for the New Zealand Chamber Music Federation (now Chamber Music New Zealand) and the Community Arts Service, playing in venues that ranged from concert halls to people’s homes. She also carried out a three-month tour of Japan as pianist for English violinist Maurice Clare.

In 1947, she travelled for the first time to Spain (a country that continued to fascinate her for the rest of her life). She toured England with a small group of Spanish artists under the auspices of the Arts Council of Great Britain. She also played in numerous broadcasts for the BBC.

In 1939, with war looming and her studies finished, McStay took up a teaching job at St Swithun's School, Winchester. Later in the war, she auditioned for Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), and joined a small classical music concert party under Walter Legge, which toured England, Holland, Belgium and France (and after the war, to the occupied zone of Germany) from 1942–46 to play to the armed forces.

At age 17, she was awarded an Associated Board Scholarship to London. A bequest from a great-uncle and fundraising by the local Invercargill community helped to raise money for her to go, and in 1935, aged 18, she sailed to England to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Janetta Mary McStay CBE (20 May 1917 – 14 June 2012) was a New Zealand concert pianist and music professor who performed with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and other orchestras, as a solo artist and as an accompanist and chamber music associate with leading artists from around the world.

McStay was born on 20 May 1917 in Roxburgh, New Zealand. She had Scottish and Irish heritage and grew up in Invercargill in a musical family of six children. Her mother, Mary (née Auld) enjoyed singing Scottish songs. Her father, Hugh William McStay, had no formal musical education but great natural talent that enabled him to play almost any instrument. He died when she was 14.