Producer’s Notes
Having two of New Zealand’s greats, Rodger Fox and Michael Houston, together on stage from two distinctly different musical genres, is certainly unique but not too surprising when you look back in time.
While Fox is considered New Zealand’s foremost jazz trombonist, big band leader, jazz educator, arranger and producer, he first took up the trombone while at Mana College in Porirua – although he wanted to play the trumpet, the college’s big band was short of trombinists. He spent his teenage years studying classical trombone, and was selected in 1969 for the National Youth Orchestra; mere weeks before starting with the orchestra he was told a mistake had been made – they had too many trombones.
Fox answered a newspaper advertisement for brass players, and his foray into professional music began with The Quincy Conserve. In 1973 he formed his first big band, The Golden Horn Big Band.
In the 40-plus years since, he has performed in concert with some of the biggest names in the business, from the jazz and entertainment world, including Louie Bellson, Bill Reichenbach, Chuck Findley, Randy Crawford, Bobby Shew, Lanny Morgan, Bruce Paulson, Diane Schuur, Arturo Sandoval, David Clayton-Thomas, Joe Williams, The Four Tops, Temptations, Gary Grant, Jon Papenbrook, Bill Cunliffe, Holly Hofmann, and Kevin Mahogany.
Fox has promoted live concerts with his Big Band in the Global Festival arena, Montreux Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Manly Jazz Festival, Wichita Jazz Festival, The International Association of Jazz Educators Concert 1997 & 1999 and concerts in London, Singapore, Australia, Poland and the USA.
He was winner of the 'Tui' for New Zealand Jazz Recording of the Year in 1981 and 2000, and a finalist in 1984 and 2001.
Had his luck not fallen short back in 1969, imagine just how different a path musically he may have taken.
Michael Houstoun playing Claude Debussey's Clair de Lune
Michael Houston began learning the piano at the age of five, under the tutelage of Sister Mary Eulalie and then of the great Maurice Till.
In 1973, as Fox was forming his first big band, Houston entered the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and was placed third. Other international successes came in 1975 at the Leeds Competition (placed fourth) and 1982 at the Tchaikowsky Competition (placed sixth).
Houston lived away from New Zealand between 1974 and 1981, performing in the USA, UK, Germany and Holland.
He returned to New Zealand in 1981, where he has continued to live and perform ever since, performing also in Australia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
He plays from a large repertoire which stretches from JS Bach to the present day, including 40 concertos and chamber music. A strong advocate of New Zealand music, works from Douglas Lilburn to John Psathas are regularly featured in his programmes. During the 1990s he concentrated on the music of Beethoven, playing the complete sonatas in five cycles around New Zealand - Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Napier.
Robin Sutherland
Some thoughts by Michael Houstoun
From The Concert Experience
When a performance is going well there is a phenomenon that occurs in the hall, a phenomenon which can never occur when a music lover is listening to a CD or watching a DVD. A silence of a very particular order descends, a galvanized silence, and everyone is present and attentive in a way that is hardly possible in ‘ordinary’ life. The music takes on a life of its own and its meaning (a dangerous word, but not entirely wrong) is enhanced. The performer responds to the atmosphere in ways that they cannot anticipate – spontaneous discoveries and other felicities suddenly appear. It is the proper concert experience – when the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts - and the unspoken hope of it is the reason audience members part with their money to buy tickets ...........
......... I see myself as a pretty level-headed artist – much less ‘tortured diva’, much more ‘10% inspiration, 90% perspiration’ – and it takes quite a lot to throw me off my stride. But I will go out of my way to protect the concert experience. Unless you are given to meditation at the highest level, it is perhaps the only situation in daily life where the realms of the transcendental can be breached. Beethoven suggests as much when he says, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy”.
