Joanna Woods was born in Dublin, but married a New Zealand diplomat. Having lived in Bahrain, France, Greece, Iran, Italy, the US and Russia, she has now settled in Wellington. was her first major book, researched while in Moscow. Her new biographical subject Charles Baeyertz migrated from Australia to New Zealand and back again, and founded the cultural publication The Triad.
Read a review of Joanna Woods' biography, Katerina: The Russian World of Katherine Mansfield, from the New Zealand Herald
Read a review of Joanna Woods' new book about Chatles Baeyertz from the New Zealand Herald
BOOKS
Facing the Music: Charles Baeyertz and The Triad
The Triad was founded in 1893 and ran into the late 1920s. For its first twenty-two years it was published in New Zealand, but in 1915 publication was transferred to Sydney where it was re-launched as an Australasian magazine.
The magazine offered well-informed coverage of cultural activities in New Zealand, Australia and internationally in a broad mix of critical and original writing. Notoriously outspoken, Baeyertz was feared and respected as a critic. His music criticism was particularly intelligent and rigorous, making no concessions to personality or amateur or professional status. His later co-editor, the self-styled ‘decadent’ Frank Morton, was equally candid.
This is an engaging biography of a fascinating man which also throws new light on a long-neglected period of New Zealand’s cultural past.