Rattling the roof

A group of Wellington musicians will be banging more than drums at the Aotea Centre this week. DENISE MONTGOMERY meets a founding member of Strike.

If it weren't for the unhappy clash of metal that came from being a cornet player with braces on his teeth, percussionist Murray Hickman might have stayed in a brass band.

At 13, the Feilding musician was forced to switch to percussion but he had no trouble settling into the rhythm of his new instrument. These days, any clash of metal and other solid objects comes from his frenetic drum-banging performances on stage.

Hickman is a founding member of the Wellington-based contemporary percussion ensemble Strike. The group was formed in 1993 when Hickman graduated from the Wellington Conservatorium of Music, but didn't really hit its straps until 1997.

Strike was never going to be about standing around on stage banging a conservative beat.

"We did a gig with the Royal New Zealand Ballet that [composer] Gareth Farr wrote," explains Hickman. "It was choreographed so the instruments we played were placed quite a distance from us. We had to reach for whatever we played and the dancers were copying our movements."

Hickman and Steve Bremner were part of that performance and realised the dramatic impact of combining percussion and dance in what could be seen as a logical marriage - rhythm is essential to choreographed movement.

Hickman had seen it work perfectly already while studying in Australia under that country's finest percussionist, Michael Askill of Synergy. He appeared in a show called Free Radicals by Askill, which featured choreographed percussion.

"It's such a physical and visual thing playing percussion anyway," says Hickman. "When you're in an orchestra you're required to stand up the back and wear a bow tie and look very nice, but running and jumping around is a lot more fun."

Essentially that's what the group has done since. The pair joined Jeremy Fitzsimmons and later Tim Whitta. (Another member left to pursue his medical career.) A couple of X chromosomes were added to the line-up last year when Canadian Kristie Ibrahim joined the group.

"Kristie has been fantastic. Jeremy invited her and she's really sexy on stage," laughs Hickman. "Us guys can't cut it on the whole sexy thing. She's really solid and does a lot of the bass line."

While Strike is about percussion, movement and dance, it's also about theatre. The group has had dramatic input from Philippa Campbell, producer of Christine Parker's film Rain, who has helped to develop Ibrahim's characterisation for the live show and has addressed the theatrical component in general. This sense of theatre extends into other production areas, with Strike's stage crew and lighting designers "a cross between rock and theatre designers", says Hickman.

"We had all these pieces and were working out the instruments to play," he says of Campbell's influence.

"She said, 'This piece makes me laugh' and developed a characterisation, and, 'This piece is serious' and dragged out all these emotions. She had this way of pacing the show and placing pieces in the right place and would tell us when we were missing something or when something needed to be light-hearted or when something wasn't working."

Campbell has also helped the show's structural strength, tightening the act from the 2 1/2-hour show first born in 1999 to the punchy, 85-minute Strike - The Stage Show.

Strike has worked with a range of choreographers over the years, including artistic director and iconic choreographer Shona McCullagh. Strike - The Stage Show has been choreographed by Wendy Wallace, head of the contemporary dance faculty at the New Zealand School of Dance.

What to expect? No one standing around in a bow tie. Cube, an outdoor show by Strike staged in Wellington in 2000, had drums and some unlikely percussion instruments dangling from scaffolding. Components of that show have been worked in with new compositions from Hickman, Whitta and Bremner, incorporating elemental aspects such as wind, fire and water.

Added to that mix is the array of cross-cultural percussion instruments, from Polynesian drums to bamboo poles. Don't be surprised to see hubcaps and car brake drums on stage, and slinkies (those colourful, spiralled toys of indeterminate purpose) are part of a running gag throughout the show.

Other things surprise about Strike. Their enthusiasm for touring schools, their performance energy and an appearance on kids' TV show What Now have led to a following among young people.

At the same time, Strike draws festival-style crowds looking for something unusual (they get it), as well as those of a classical bent. Their first CD, Strike New Zealand Percussion Music (HRL Morrison Music Trust), won Classical Album of the Year at last year's New Zealand Music Awards. It includes works by Farr, Hickman, Don McGlashan and Miriana Young.

Performances in Europe, including one at the 2000 Paris Percussion Festival and shows in London, were extremely successful.

Last year the group played three shows as part of the Cervantino Cultural Festival in Mexico. Strike was one of two New Zealand groups invited to attend the festival to build cultural relations with South American countries, and was helped by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

However, due to a bit of inattention on the part of Mexican authorities, Strike's instruments inadvertently took a trip to New Orleans rather than to New Zealand, forcing them to cancel last December's scheduled Auckland gigs. It's taken until now to finally get them rattling the roof at the Aotea Centre.

* Strike: Aotea Centre, Tuesday and Wednesday.