[7] Before her death in Palmerston North on 28 November 2022, at the age of 81,[8] McLeod lived in Pukerua Bay, working on music theory, especially the relationships between notes and scales.

In the mid-1980s, McLeod encountered the work of Dutch composer Peter Schat, who had developed a post-tonal compositional technique called the Tone Clock.

It tells the story of the Māori myth of creation, notably the separation of the Earth Mother, Papa-Tū-ā-Nuku from the Sky Father, Ranginui.

In spite of its few performances, it is regarded as a landmark in New Zealand music, by reason of its large scale, local content and experimental nature.

The first two movements are in sonata form, each complete with first subject, transition theme, and contrasting second group, with a classical-type development section, at the end of which there is also an opportunity for an improvised cadenza (Albulescu's idea, and an uncommon feature of his performances—by his own desire held well in check, however, in the present recording).

Though the music is newly composed, and its rhythmic language is very much of our own time (in a popular sense), it is also strongly impelled by the spirit of Beethoven (Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Debussy, Gershwin...)—the "distant friends" referred to in the first movement.

Charlie was an Australian aboriginal activist who shared her home in Wellington for a time and later succumbed, alas, as an early victim of AIDS.

The headlong last movement is in rondo-sonata form, with a Latino romp as its recurring rondo, a nursery-type second theme, and a development-cum-episode that starts in a quasi-Iberian vein.

The opera is based on a true story of the Māori chief Hōhepa Te Umuroa and a British settler Thomas Mason during the Land Wars of the 1800s.

[15][16] Several of McLeod's songs were written for 1,000 children and the Bach Choir, which was performed at the Sun Festival in Oriental Bay, Wellington Harbour in December 1983[4] as part of Summer City.

[citation needed] McLeod wrote many hymns in Māori for the annual choral competitions Katorika Hui Aranga held in the Whanganui region at Easter.