Winston Watusi Music Plus

Although it wasn't widely reported, certainly not as widely as it should have been, two weeks ago we lost one of the greats from New Zealand's jazz world.

Jim Langabeer, who was 80, may not be familiar to many beyond the jazz community – but to those in that community Jim was a friend, a mentor, an innovator, an inspirational teacher, and an extraordinary musician. His primary instruments were saxophone, flute and clarinet.

Jim Langabeer

Jim also had a long association with Tauranga – I'm going to miss a pile of stuff here but let me tell you a little about him.

Back in 1967 Jim featured in one of the very first shows on NZ television, ‘Jazz Mode'. He even wrote an original tune for it. At university, before the jazz bug bit, he was in heavy demand in the studio, playing sessions with Freddie Keil and the Kavaliers, Tommy Adderley, Lou and Simon, The Prophets, Peter Posa and more.

Then in 1974, along with Richard Nunns, Jim and several Christchurch players formed the 8-piece Double Quartet which revolutionarily featured taonga puoro instruments. Shortly afterwards he moved to Tauranga and was instrumental in creating the National Youth Jazz Band Competition, still flourishing today.

In the eighties he went to the Creative Music School in New York where he met Granchan Moncur III, David Liebman, John Cage and others. This stint inspired compositions with the ground-breaking Kiwi band Superbrew on their award-winning album ‘Africa/Aroha'.

International

Obviously I could go on and on: he toured and recorded with international performers such as Sammy Davis Jnr, The Bee Gees, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Alan Broadbent and Mavis Rivers. He played with more bands than I can mention, and played on countless albums: ‘Secret Islands', ‘One Way Ticket', ‘Multo Rubato', ‘Trip To The Moon', there were many…More recently he could be seen as guest soloist with the Prohibition Big Band and its subsidiaries.

To celebrate Jim's life the Audio Culture website has republished an interview with him by Norman Meehan. It is well worth a listen at: audioculture.co.nz/articles/jim-langabeer-finding-jazz

Moving along, regular readers might have been pleased to see that this isn't another 'any day now things will go pear-shaped” column.

Nah, I think we've all had enough of that. Things have not gone pear-shaped yet and an increasing number of people are assuming that they never will. I do so hope they're right.

But the effect of this whole thing upon musicians was brought home to me during the weekend when I sat down with a few of them to talk about the current crisis.

A story

So here's the story of a professional musician, whose name I'll skip because I forgot to ask him if I could quote our conversation and since it's really a representative story, not a specific one.

This guy used to live in Auckland, played gigs, taught music at the university, worked for Operatunity, who constantly toured, performing daytime concerts for retirees, and in professional theatre. You may have seen him playing piano with Operatunity at the Holy Trinity church last year.

All that has gone. He can no longer afford to stay in Auckland and has moved down here to live with his mother. Operatunity have just cancelled tours for the indefinite future out of concern about possibly spreading Omicron given the average age of their audience. Theatre work is pretty much stuffed and as for gigs? Well there may be a few here – at The Jam Factory or Jack Dusty's for instance – but they are, realistically, gigs for musicians wanting to play music, not wanting to pay the rent.

He and the other musicians are all in exactly the same boat, and I'm talking top-rank professionals here; people who have toured the country, won awards, people who are well-known in their field. They are sitting around wondering when the money is going to run out. For many it has already.

And I know. Everyone is doing it tough. Who'd want to be a travel agent during the last two years? But I write mainly about music and this is what it's like for musicians.