Melissa (Ngāti Mutunga) is an educator, educational coach, singer, and conductor based in South Auckland. With over 20 years of experience, her professional background is rooted in education, where she has served as a classroom teacher, music specialist, and leader. She currently holds the position of Deputy Principal at Māngere East School.
Her passion for choral music began at an early age, singing in her primary school choir and later as a member of Aorere College Choir and Auckland Youth Choir. This love for music is a family affair, as she and her husband are raising four children who all love to sing. Melissa’s expertise and commitment to vocal excellence have made her a valued contributor to numerous projects, including national and international tours and high-profile concert events.
A foundation member of the Graduate Choir NZ since 2001, Melissa is also a member of Voices NZ Chamber Choir and serves on the NZCF Governance Board. Recently, she performed twice with the Auckland-based Signature choir in the Mana Moana shows at Spark Arena. Melissa has a deep passion for the arts and all things Māori, leading kapa haka groups, choirs, and professional development sessions for teachers. Service has always been a core value for her, guiding her involvement in various committees and boards over the years.

Joshua is a bass-baritone hailing from Hawkes Bay and now currently based in Wellington. As well as Voices New Zealand, Joshua also sings with a number of other ensembles including the Tudor Consort, The Queen’s Closet and the Cathedral Choir of the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul. Joshua also recently finished a cycle with the New Zealand Youth Choir in July 2025 after winning various awards at the European choir games and winning ‘Choir of the World’ at the international Eisteddford competition in Llangollen, Wales.
Though primarily an ensemble singer, Joshua has also started exploring the world of solo singing – notably in performances with the Queen’s Closet, and accompanying the Wellington Youth Choir as the baritone soloist in their performance of “Considering Matthew Shepherd”, an oratorio work composer by Craig Hella Johnson.

Josh Long is a Wellington based tenor who works as a Civil Engineer. Born and raised in Auckland, he has sung with the Auckland Chamber Choir, and was a Margot Lloyd Scholar for Harbour Voices. Now living in Wellington, he sings with, and is the chairperson of, the Wellington Youth Choir. He also sings with Tudor Consort and Octosquad. He has featured on the score choirs for the Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and the Minecraft movie. He has been a member of the New Zealand Youth Choir since 2022, and was part of the choir that won Choir of the World in 2025. He has been a member of the Voices New Zealand pool since 2021, and 2025 marks his first year in the core choir.

A New Zealander of Māori and Samoan extraction, Steven is best known for his arrangements and compositions of Pacific choral music. Tracing his family lineage back to his ancestral lands of the Hokianga in the north of Aotearoa, as well as to the Samoan villages of Sāfune and Sāmauga in Savai’i, and Vailoa (Aleipata) in Upolu, he was greatly influenced by the customs and music of both cultures. In particular his childhood involvement in traditional Samoan church life, through the insistence of his maternal grandparents, meant that music, both religious and cultural, was always a feature of his upbringing.

A graduate of the University of Auckland in vocal performance and choral studies, Steven has arranged and composed music for many notable national choirs including the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir and the New Zealand Youth Choir. He currently works as a singing teacher, choral director, language coach (phonology and languages for singers), a professional singer, arranger, and composer in and around New Zealand.

Jono Palmer is a dynamic and enterprising conductor from Auckland, New Zealand. His choirs have won national and international acclaim, including two Gold Medals at the 2015 Grand Prix of Nations in Magdeburg, Germany, and many awards at regional and national festivals of the NZCF Big Sing festival. As a conductor, Jono has been selected for masterclasses at the 2017 World Symposium of Choral Music and the 2017 National Collegiate Choral Organization National Conference. In October 2018, he was a finalist in the inaugural London International Choral Conducting Competition.

He has a particular research interest in choral works inspired by te ao Māori, especially in the influence of colonisation and cultural appropriation on New Zealand choral music, which is the topic of his doctoral dissertation. In 2019, he presented a paper at the national conference of the National Collegiate Choral Organization on the performance of kapahaka music by non-Māori choirs, and in 2021 he led a round-table discussion at Indiana University on issues related to the appropriation and cultural borrowing of Indigenous music by Western composers.  

As a singer, Jono has been a member of the New Zealand Secondary Students Choir, the New Zealand Youth Choir, and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir. Some of his solo engagements have included the role of Papageno in The Magic Flute (Class Act Opera), Superintendent Budd in Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring (University of Auckland), a Christmas concert tour with Operatunity, and guest solo performances with the South Auckland Choral Society and Auckland Choral Society. Jono has also performed several times with the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project.

Jono has sung with many of Auckland’s leading choirs including the University of Auckland Chamber Choir, Musica Sacra, Viva Voce, Bach Musica, Holy Trinity Cathedral Choir, V8 Vocal Ensemble, Voices of the Age of Discovery, and Laudamus Vocal Ensemble. At Indiana University, he has performed regularly with the HPI ensemble Concentus, as well as NOTUS Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, University Singers, the Conductor’s Chorus, and the Singing Hoosiers.

Jono has earned a MM in Choral Conducting from Indiana University, a BMus(hons) in Performance Voice, and a BA in Ancient History from the University of Auckland. He is a doctoral candidate in Choral Conducting at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where he is currently writing the doctoral final project document.

Blake is a bass from Auckland, and has been singing with Voices NZ since 2019. He currently also sings with the Auckland Chamber Choir, various smaller ensembles, and is a previous member of the NZ Youth Choir. Between his singing engagements, Blake works as a management/strategy consultant.