King’s Birthday and Coronation Honours 2023: Reward for a near lifetime in brass bands

Murray Warrington, now an MNZM for service to brass bands, in Hawke's Bay and nationally. Photo / Paul Taylor

Veteran Hawke’s Bay bandsman Murray Warrington has just become top brass, albeit “humbled” in being named a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the Royal Honours - the first King’s Birthday Honours since 1951.

Now living in Napier, he’s been a bandsman for 62 of those 72 years, since joining the Hastings Citizens Band in 1961, as an 11-year-old schoolboy in Hastings, and during a career in banking and office management, he was a foundation trustee of the Brass Band Association of New Zealand (BBANZ) Charitable Trust and continues as treasurer of the BBANZ.

Until 2018 he served as president of Deco Bay Brass, the result of the Hastings Citizen Band and the Port of Napier Brass Band merger he managed in 2014, and over the years he has served in most positions from playing member (mainly on baritone or tenor trombone) to secretary-treasurer, committee member and chairman.

He was secretary-treasurer for the eight-week National Band of New Zealand tour of North America in 1980, and manager of a fortnight-long North Island tour in 2003, and a three-week tour in Europe in 2005, including the World Championships in The Netherlands.

He also managed the National Youth Band, including in 1994 for the purpose of leading the New Zealand contingent at the World Convention of Lions Clubs in Phoenix, Arizona, and in 1996 managed the Hastings Citizens Band on a 10-day visit to Hong Kong and China.

He was made a life member of the Hastings Citizens Band in 1992, of the BBANZ in 2008, and of Deco Bay Brass in 2018, in a career which included being on the committee that brought the national brass band championships to Napier in 2009, and chaired the committee when they were in the Bay again in 2018.

It all started when he was at Heretaunga Intermediate and responded to the call for new, and young, members of the Citizens Band, and he notes the call is still out for new, and young, members.

He had asthma as a child, and believes, backed by some researched evidence, that its resolution came from his active part playing the instruments in the band, of which he describes himself as “just another member”.

There was still life for other interests outside family, career and the bands, and he served on school committees, the board of Napier’s Sacred Heart College, where wife Shona was the receptionist, as a street co-ordinator for Neighbourhood Watch - since its inception - as a manager of election day polling booths, and a tutor of engaged couples marriage preparation courses.

He said he’s “very humbled” to be adjudged as worthy of the MNZM, for what has been a life of opportunities that he says he would not have had, had he not embarked on the bands pathway in 1961.