Bowie concert no rebel act for orchestra

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s selection of David Bowie for full symphonic treatment is far from the left- field programming it may seem. From the start of his career, Bowie, the songwriter, was always closer to Beatles’ pop than the tougher R& B of the Rolling Stones. The Fab Four took to lacing their songs with orchestral instruments and so did Bowie from his very first album in 1967, a collection of wry vignettes that nodded to music hall and cabaret rather than Memphis, Tennessee, or Kingston, Jamaica. Bowie’s first chart success would come with Space

Oddity in 1969, a ballad of alienation for a questioning generation, indelibly associated with Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first moonwalk. The song’s impact would have been so much less without the string arrangements of Paul Buckmaster and the extra- terrestrial woodwind flutterings, courtesy of producer Tony Visconti. This song launches the APO’s Starman concert next Thursday, very much laid out over the orchestra’s strings, although Daniel Denholm’s arrangement does charge the atmosphere with a solo tenor saxophone, directed to be played with “lots of bends and sexy” while Laughton Kora takes a break from singing duties. Bowie was drawn to the almost primal power of the orchestra in the early albums that made his name. Strings were crucial to 1972’ s The Rise and Fall of

Ziggy Stardust especially in its final irrevocable chord after the death of its hero, reminding one of the similar orchestral chord that closed the Beatles’ A Day in the Life. But Starman’s five Australian arrangers — Denholm, Joe Twist, Jamie Messenger, Nic Buc, Jess Wells and Ben Northey — take some ingeniously creative license with the Bowie originals. When singer Jon Toogood exhorts the children to boogie in the concert’s title song, they do so with full orchestral support, thanks to Twist, a noted composer himself, with a recent children’s opera titled The Grumpiest Boy in the World to his credit. We’re promised Bowie classics and the playlist covers almost 50 years of songs, through to Lazarus from last year’s X album, which once again puts Toogood in the spotlight. Behind the singer, Twist fleshes out the original, with the luxury of horns where once there were only electronics; duelling saxophones are retained from the original but string tremolos cast their own dark and sinister shadows. Bowie fans may be surprised by the additional workout that Denholm gives the woodwind when Julia Deans sings Life on Mars, but the song’s talking cello and bass lines, so much part of its dramatic signature, remain. Gustav Mahler may well have approved.