Grammy award winning Taonga Puoro practitioner/composer Jerome Kavanagh Poutama (Puoro Jerome) is a Pāpā who hails from the iwi of Ngāti Maniapoto - Matakore, Mōkai Pātea, Kahungunu, Ngāti Rangi - Awa Whanganui, Tūwharetoa (Māori) as well as Caomhanach (Irish) ancestry.

Over the past 21-years Jerome has become a full-time, independent Taonga Puoro practitioner and has come to be one of the most prolific providers of Puoro in Aotearoa. He is an established producer and composer of Taonga Puoro music for film, television series and commercial campaigns both in Aotearoa and overseas.

During his career Jerome has toured extensively all over the world, performing at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, the Sydney Opera House and the British Museum. Jerome was a featured solo artist and lyricist on the two-time Grammy award-winning album Calling All Dawns for his track Kia Hora te Marino recorded at Abbey Road studios, with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Over the past decade he has also been sharing the “ORO ATUA” (a Māori sound journey experience) and has toured the ORO ATUA extensively around Aotearoa and throughout Australia, Europe, UK, Indonesia and the USA.