Concert honours legendary dancer
Sir Jon Trimmer remembered with arts scholarship
Aspecial concert will honour the late Sir Jon Trimmer and raise funds to support performing and visual artists. Various musical and dance performers will entertain at the Southward Theatre in May.
Proceeds from the concert will go to the Sir Jon Trimmer Arts Scholarship which will be officially launched at the concert.
The fund has been established with the Nikau Foundation to deliver long-term support to Kāpiti performing and visual artists.
Scholarships distributed from the fund will be overseen by the Creative Kāpiti Trust, and will be awarded to residents demonstrating outstanding practical arts ability and potential, in performing and visual arts in alternate years.
“Even the most iconic, memorable people, like Sir Jon, eventually become forgotten,” Creative Kāpiti trustee Liz Koh said.
“The scholarship fund will ensure Sir Jon’s memory lives on, his passion for both performing and visual arts continues to be felt, and that he continues to inspire new generations of artists long into the future.”
Sir Jon, from Paekā kā riki, who died in October aged 84, after a battle with cancer, was a legendary mainstay of the Royal New Zealand Ballet for decades, and danced with overseas companies too.
The line-up:
Ray Woolf began his singing career in the United Kingdom in the 1960s across London from the emerging Beatles, but shifted to New Zealand with his family in 1962. He had attended a music school alongside singer Helen Shapiro, and he toured New Zealand with her in 1963 after she shot to stardom. New Zealand has been his base ever since. He has performed in musicals, movies, had his own television show, and more.
Neil Worboys featured in the 1972 ‘jugband crazies’, the Bulldogs All-Star Goodtime Band. John Dix in Stranded in Paradise described this bunch of Victoria University students, whose selection of ‘instruments’ included the kazoo, tea-chest bass and washboard, as the natural successors to the 1969 New Faces finalists, Alec Wishart’s Hogsnort Rupert. “Their ridiculous stage costumes, infectious humour, bouncy songs and Worboys’ foghorn voice” helped them into the finals of 1973 New Faces. Nowadays Worboys is part of the slightly more conservative Wellington Heads band.
Steve McDonald was part of the Wellington pop/rock scene from the
mid-60s, playing drums and featuring with vocals in Dizzy Limits, Timberjack and then Auckland’s
Human Instinct. In the years since he has made a name for himself performing contemporary Celtic music. He usually spends half of each year touring in the United States, and has sold over one million CDs in the US alone. He regularly plays in Scottish festivals in the States to crowds in excess of 50,000 people.
Wayne Mason featured in Formulaya from 1967 in the Hutt Valley, a band that toured extensively around Britain and Europe, and much later in the Warratahs. A songwriter, his song Nature was named by APRA in 2004 as ‘Best Kiwi Song of the Century’. He was awarded the NZ Order of Merit for his services to music.
Sam Manzanza is a Congolese master percussionist who has become an identity in the Wellington musical scene. He learnt drumming at the National Ballet of Zaire in the Congo. He has played and sung to audiences all over the world, but has more recently become a local identity featuring in Wellington on ceremonial occasions in Government House and the Beehive. His ‘spicy African music’ is infectious.
Andrew London began alongside veteran pianist/bass player Terry Crayford in the 90s in Hot Club Sandwich as swing-style musicians,
and then he formed The Cattlestops in 2004 with Hamilton County Bluegrass Band violinist Colleen Trenwith. He is a very busy musician who happily plays alongside a host of other musicians, but his wife Kirsten London on bass and Wayne Mason are two regulars. Andrew’s special feature is his own “satirical and comedic songs which lampoon many of New Zealand society’s obsessions, fables and taboos”.
Matthew Marshall is one of New Zealand’s leading classical guitarists who has studied, played and taught across the world — 2000 performances throughout Europe, Asia, Pacific islands, America, Australasia, and from Iceland to Siberia and Easter Island. He performs with orchestras or solo, and plays both classical and contemporary music.
Classical highlights in the concert include duets from New Zealand opera singers Karyn Andreassen and Jess Segal. Also solo vocalist Hannah Chisholm, who has featured at many Paraparaumu College concerts since attending there as a pupil, and in a number of musicals. Other local musicians to appear will be Paekākāriki singer Holly Jane Ewens, Kāpiti Mayor Janet Holborow who performs on the cello or the flute, and pianist Gilbert Haisman, who will welcome the audience to their seats on the grand piano. Singing students from Paraparaumu College and Kāpiti College will also feature.
Dance will feature early in the show with groups from Sweet Studio Dance School, Paraparaumu College, and the New Zealand School of Dance.