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Doctor's notes

New Zealand Listener

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October 4-10, 2025

A new work by paediatrician and composer Louise Webster gets the APO treatment.

- by RICHARD BETTS

Doctor's notes

'It sounds really stupid, but I didn't realise you could study composition at university,” says Dr Louise Webster, who has a doctorate in composition from the University of Auckland.

She appreciates the irony, but in fairness to Webster, whose Proof Against Burning appears in Auckland Philharmonia's Fantastique! programme on October 16, she was probably distracted by the medical degree she completed instead. She has had a stellar 40-something-year career as a child psychiatrist and paediatrician, and only recently reduced her workload at Starship Hospital.

Music, though, has always been there. Webster studied piano with Janetta McStay and Judith Clark, both legendary figures in the New Zealand piano world, and she taught the instrument herself all the way through medical school.

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