About Orchestral Arranging & Composition

In the time honoured tradition.

Throughout my career as a composer, arranger, performer, conductor, university lecturer, tutor and administrator across a wide variety of musical styles,  I have honed my compositional and arranging skills through the development of an advanced aural perception.

Developed unconsciously from an early age, this aptitude has played an integral role in both my research and creativity. My writing skills were further enhanced by informal and often impromptu discussions with local and international jazz luminaries and ongoing development through experimentation and professional application composing, arranging and directing performances by major New Zealand and international musical organizations. This included the aural transcription and analysis of thousands of recordings in many different 20th century genres, both jazz and popular.

I was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1940.            My life and career ran contiguous to the gradual development of jazz from music for dancing to a more esoteric art form for the concert hall and recordings. “Learning by osmosis” - the sharing of cherished recordings and snippets of information - was common practice. By age 14 I had memorised all the solos from our collection of swing records and could sing or whistle them while listening to the recording; likewise the themes of the classics. I was a relative latecomer to the business when, at age 16, I purchased my first trumpet and commenced to teach myself to read music.

University education in jazz was unavailable in New Zealand in the 50s, a situation that existed until 1999 when I created and established the Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies for The University of Auckland.

At age 17 I was leading a small dance band and writing the arrangements. I had developed a deep interest in vocal groups and sang with friends in a quartet that performed repertoire by popular groups the 4 Aces and the 4 Lads. Around this time I “discovered” Gene Peurling and his quartet 'The Hi-Los' who were to become a major influence on my musical directions, not to mention the wonderful big band accompaniments by Frank Comstock. Essentially self-taught, much of my musical theory education came from transcribing Peurling’s intricate chords; also the arrangements of jazz vocal group The Four Freshmen whom I discovered soon after.

Late in the 1950s I wrote my first big band arrangements for the '57a' rehearsal band, which was to become the Auckland Neophonic Orchestra - the breeding ground of Auckland’s big band jazz and radio and television studio recording scene.

From 1970 to 1983, as a Musical Director for Television New Zealand, I was jointly responsible for the arranging, conducting and sound mixing supervision of up to 44 weeks of programming per year. Before leaving for Australia in 1983 the NZ Symphony Orchestra had recorded my “Dialogue for Trumpet and Orchestra”.

I arranged for Sydney TV Channels 9 and 10 and Channel 7 Perth WA, Perth big bands JazzWest, the West Australian Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Perth Jazz Orchestra, the Jazz Australia Orchestra for the1992 Jazz Australia IAJE Convention, my own WA Jazz Choir and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra for which I was program consultant from 1987 to 1995. I was appointed senior lecturer in Jazz Studies at the WA Academy of Performing Arts (1985-1994) specializing in Arranging and Composition, Aural Training and Vocal Studies and played a key role in the development of this program.

I returned to New Zealand to lecture at the Christchurch Polytechnic in 1995. I devised, arranged and conducted 41 concerts for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra (1993 – 2003) and formed and directed the Christchurch Jazz Arts Orchestra and Voiceworks Jazz Choir. In 1999 I moved to Auckland to create and administer the Jazz Studies program at The University of Auckland.

My big band arrangements are performed and recorded internationally by US trumpet master Bobby Shew and since 2004 I have also lectured in jazz arranging and jazz vocal group techniques at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and The Shell Lake Arts Centre.

I have been fortunate in having been exposed to a wide range of changing jazz styles and genres over the past 55 years - from swing through, bebop, cool, post bop and a variety of big band innovators, to contemporary styles of today. My greatest aid, and the greatest advice I can offer my students, is the art of analytical listening. In the absence of tutors and texts that could show me up-to-the-minute style changes, my ears and the aural skills I developed transcribing, have been my most valuable tools. Through transcription I have “studied” under the finest writers the jazz world has to offer and I continue to do so. This aural ability has proven to be of particular advantage in my work as a commercial arranger; work that included the aural transcription of several thousand recordings in many different 20th century genres, both jazz and popular. The ability to write down the individual parts as I heard them was invaluable and the wide-ranging repertoire further enhanced my knowledge.

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