Tour with Neil Finn began journey
When she walked out of the Waiopehu College gates four years ago Kaysha Bowler had no idea of the musical journey on which she was about to embark.
The 21-year-old, who is currently tackling a masters of Creative Enterprise at Massey University, has been living the dream since leaving high school on a path of study that incorporated a love of music with a flair for artistic performance and design.
That journey also included a spot on a tour with legendary New Zealand musician Neil Finn and his son Liam as part of the lighting crew last year, taking in parts of the country less travelled.
Ms Bowler said she was passionate about her chosen field of study, and that helped.
“Ever since I was a child I knew I wanted to be involved in the music industry which is quite unique, I suppose, to know your purpose when you are quite small,” she said.
“But I had no idea that this was the road I would be going down.”
Her interests lay in electronic music and light interaction and she saw a gap in the market with a need for artists to have tools that enabled them to transcend themselves through interactive technology.
It was after touring with the Finns that Kaysha Bowler came up with the idea of providing artists with the ability to control their own sound and lighting while performing.
So she invented Plex, an MIDI controller that gave performers that control. “I’ve had great feedback so far,” she said.
Ms Bowler now had her own website in which she was described as an interface developer, sound artist and lighting designer.
Ms Bowler completed her Bachelor of Commercial Music last year, and was now working on her masters, which would enable her to further develop and ultimately commercialise her music technology.
An accomplished musician herself with a variety of instruments, more recently she was “dabbling with more synthesised and computer-based music”.
Meanwhile, the Finn tour, called A Low Hum, took her off the beaten track to places like Purekireki, Tauhei, Tirohanga, and Himitangi Beach last summer, performing 19 shows in total.
A pictorial book of the tour called Where’s My Room was released, capturing intimate moments of Neil and Liam Finn, the crew, and communities they visited.
“Wake up, drive, load-in, setup, sound-check, rest, perform, pack-down, load-out, sleep, repeat,” was how the tour was described.
“This is what happens when 20-odd friends, family, band and crew head out on the road in rural New Zealand and attempt something out of the ordinary.”
Neil Finn himself gave reasons for the tour. “Young New Zealanders head out as soon as they can — but are they missing something precious on their own doorstep? Now the world seems fixated on watching itself in a spiral of despair, perhaps there is something to be discovered by exploring the margins; what’s happening unobserved in the small towns. Some truth,” he said.