Music is year-round

New Zealand Music Month may be coming to an end but here at The Weekend Sun every month is New Zealand Music Month.

We don't need an artificial construct to celebrate and report on NZ music and the way it's being done and I don't think NZ music needs it much either. Ninety five per cent of Kiwi music is completely ignored by Music Month, which has become little more than a promotional nod to mainstream pop, another push for music companies and radio stations which have no interests in music beyond their balance sheets.

Luckily, we're here to write about the stuff they ignore, and there's plenty of it.
This week's dispatches come from behind the lines of one of Tauranga's musical dynasties.

Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. But they do have two generations of musicians and I've never had CDs arrive in the same week from a mother and son, so that's as close to a dynasty as we've got right now.

I'm talking about the Arts-Laven axis, Marion, Robbie and son Oscar. They're all musicians and all pretty busy producing music. The only question is where to start? They are three-quarters of Gypsy jazz group Bonjour Swing and have been booked a second time for the Oz Manouche Gypsy Jazz Festival in Brisbane in November, which is pretty much the premier such event over there. That's seriously cool.

Robbie also plays with roots country outfit The Remarkables along with three fellas from Auckland. They headlined the Hamilton Folk Festival and are recording a CD at Welcome Bay's Colourfield Studio in August, a mixture of Americana originals, blues, swing, bluegrass and nostalgia. Robbie's also performing with their singer Neil Finlay at the Rotorua Blues Festival this weekend as a duo, with Robbie playing fiddle, mandolin and washboard.

Meanwhile, Marion continues on her own eclectic path and has just released a CD of her classical guitar suite ‘Flute & Drum Music At Sunset'. It blows me away, the various albums Marion continues to produce. The last one was songs on the ukulele; before that, I think, another classical one; before that Bonjour Swing.

This was recorded by Peter Hodges in Tauranga and mastered at Stebbings in Auckland. It's inspired by the Chinese Pipa player Wu Man (indeed a woman), whom Marion heard at the Auckland Arts Festival last year. The first thing you'll notice is it contains no actual flutes or drums, just a solo classical guitar.

In fact it starts with what sounds uncannily like guitar tuning. Except once you listen again, you realise there's no actual tuning going on, it's a rhythmic approximation of tuning which segues into a lilting piece of lyrical playing before popping up again as a musical motif. It really is very clever and very lovely.

It's a beautiful CD, at times percussive, at times meditative, and one I need to listen to further. I'd suggest all lovers of classical guitar check it out by emailing Arts-Laven@xtra.conz.

And I have yet to mention Oscar, currently in Wellington studying music and, by all accounts, blowing the capital away.

Last month Oscar debuted his Neo Jazz Jive Orchestra, a big band playing a mixture of classic big band charts and Oscar's compositions, which hover between serious jazz and Brian Setzer. Oscar conducts solos on tenor sax and sings; and the word is they are stunning.

But it's his more regular band, hot dadaist New Orleans outfit The Wellington City Shake-‘Em-On-Downers, that continue to make waves.

They have recorded a CD called ‘Shake It On Down!' and it's rather brilliant. It sounds like it was made in the 1920s: frantic, frenetic jazz-age jazz, with wild syncopated horns and a woman singer who sounds like she stepped out of a Charleston party.
But, aside from two (devil-may-care romps through ‘Georgia Brown' and ‘Honeysuckle Rose') these are original compositions.

It's available via same email and I can't recommend it highly enough.
There are clips of what Oscar is doing on YouTube and on Marion's website: www.marionarts.co.nz

He's clearly going to rule the musical world one day – get in early and check him out now.

watusi@thesun.co.nz

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