Online exclusive
This is the first in a new series where Kiwis share the side hustles, the hobbies or the dual careers that keep them busy. Bryan Crump is a Radio New Zealand Concert presenter and choir director
“I host the 3-7pm show on RNZ Concert, which is, as it says on the label, the programme RNZ Concert runs in the late afternoon/ early evening. It includes one interview but mostly it’s introducing and talking about music – and not talking too much because the music comes first.
Not talking too much is sometimes a bit difficult for me, but listeners remind me if I am going on a bit too much and not striking the right balance between enthusiasm for the music and actually playing it.
I like to think that people who are sharing their music with me actually give a damn about it, so I think a little bit of enthusiasm is good, but I am working on the balance.
In 2009, I co-founded and now arrange the music for the Doubtful Sounds Choir in Wellington. We rehearse on Sundays, even though I’ve got my evenings back now and could probably do it during the week.
That said, we’re cranking things up a bit now for the World Choir Games in Auckland next month. We’re doing four songs, starting with Slice of Heaven and then Fur Patrol’s Lydia.
We veer away from NZ songs to do Venus; Shocking Blue did it originally, but the Bananarama version is probably better known.
Then we’re going to finish with Batman – the theme from the TV series.
It’s got a great hook but it never had any lyrics apart from “Batman”. One of our singers, Garry Smith, has serious form in the Indie music world as a former member of the band The Body Electric that had a hit in the 80s with Pulsing. Anyway, he’s got a great voice and I could hear him singing some lyrics so I went ahead and wrote some.
He’s a crime fighting mammal from the order terrestrial
A DC comic smash from the interval era
He’s fighting for justice; he’s fighting for truth.
He’s the reason a lot of us squandered our youth
The choir started years before, in the 90s, when some friends at RNZ wanted to form a gospel choir to get people around for drinks and snacks and to sing gospel music.
They must have known I was a singer, so they asked would I like to sing with them. I loved it and it became kind of a thing that a bunch of us would sing at RNZ Christmas parties or at private functions for people’s birthday parties or weddings.
I left to go and work in Australia and didn’t do any singing because I was too busy doing other things. When I came back, and became the host of RNZ Nights, I wanted to sing again with these old buddies of mine, so we reformed. I think we actually got together again to sing at the funeral of a much-loved colleague of mine, Denis Phelps.
We wanted to keep singing but I couldn’t be in any choir because they tend to rehearse at night and I was hosting an evening radio show. So the only way to get something going was to start my own thing where we could rehearse on weekends.
I started becoming a bit more serious about this, you know, fiddling around with the chords and thinking, “I’d like to create some of my own arrangements.” So, the choir evolved but we didn’t have a name.
Originally, we were going to call ourselves Sounds Like Us. It was an RNZ slogan at one point. Kim Hill and Mark Cubey mercilessly mocked it on Saturday mornings, playing things like hoons revving up their cars, sirens, chainsaws and asking, “Does that sound like us?”
Anyway, we got more serious about the whole endeavour and held a weekend workshop where we came up with the name Doubtful Sounds. That’s how it began. There’s a core of a dozen or so who give up their Sunday afternoons and evenings to rehearse and perform songs mostly arranged by me.
They’re pop songs with a classical twist. I’m the classical influence there.
My dad – he was a postmaster – had a big record collection, mainly classical music, and he was a singer. His brother, my Uncle Gordon, would come over, they’d have a few beers and put some records on the stereo and crank up the volume.
Dad sang in choirs and would do things with others, like singing in rest homes. He had two strokes but sang right up until his second which knocked out his voice. He was about 72 or 73 when that happened.
I sang, but I didn’t play any instruments other than scratching at the cello and tinkering on the piano. I don’t think I had the temperament for it – or the co-ordination. I just wasn’t prepared to knuckle down and do the work required, but I sang – although I wasn’t in any formal choir until I was 14 and at Papatoetoe High School in South Auckland.
Geoffrey Skerrett, the music teacher at the time, had this madrigal group of kids with really good voices, but I couldn’t join because my voice had broken. But when the other boys’ voices broke, that changed things. Geoffrey heard me auditioning for the school play; I think I was singing I’m Getting Married in the Morning, and decided he needed to put some bass into the choir.
That was the start of it for me; from then on, I sang in choirs at university and when I went to London where I got quite serious about things. I got into the Philharmonia Chorus, which sings with orchestras as well as touring quite a bit. Travel and accommodation were paid for, so for me doing an OE at the time, it was pretty good.
When I returned to NZ, I joined Voices NZ in its early days. Why not join a band and be a rock musician? That didn’t appeal at all – and I couldn’t play the guitar! Classical music was it for me and my discovery of non-classical music came later, in my 20s.
I’m excited about the World Choir Games. I think just getting all these different choirs from around the world, singing together a celebration of song and with very different ways of singing will create a huge buzz that will really light up Auckland in July.
I think it’ll be a great thing to be part of.”
The World Choir Games are on in Auckland, July 10-20 and are expected to bring in 11,000 singers in 250 choirs from 30 different countries.
