Wayne Senior - Auckland Jazz Orchestra

It’s the Auckland Jazz and Blues Club privilege to host Wayne Senior leading the Auckland Jazz Orchestra. Come and hear why Wayne has earned his place amongst New Zealand’s best. An illustrious career as a composer, arranger, performer, conductor, university lecturer, tutor and administrator has made him a familiar name within the music industry.

His music and arrangements embrace the history of jazz styles and genres from swing through bebop, from cool to post bop. Like many of the big band innovators over the decades he has arrived at a contemporary style which infuses these influences.

Auckland born (1940) Waynes music experiences ran contiguous to the gradual development of jazz from music for dancing to a more esoteric art form for the concert hall. At age 16 he picked up Trumpet and began to teach himself to read music and within a year he would be writing arrangements and leading a small dance band.

Late in the 1950s Wayne attempted his fist big band arrangements for the '57a' rehearsal band, which was to become the Auckland Neophonic Orchestra - the breeding ground of Auckland’s big band jazz and radio and television studio recording scene. Eventually Wayne would create and establish the Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies for The University of Auckland.

From 1970 to 1983, he was Musical Director for Television New Zealand and jointly responsible for the arranging, conducting and sound mixing. Towards the end of this tenure the NZ Symphony Orchestra recorded his “Dialogue for Trumpet and Orchestra”.

Australia beckoned in 1983 and Wayne found work as an arranger for Sydney TV Channels 9 and 10 and Channel 7 Perth WA. He also wrote for Perth big bands JazzWest, the West Australian Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Perth Jazz Orchestra. He formed his own Jazz Choir and was program consultant from 1987 to 1995 for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed senior lecturer in Jazz Studies at the WA Academy of Performing Arts (1985-1994) specializing in Arranging and Composition, Aural Training and Vocal Studies and played a key role in the development of that program.
Wayne returned to NZ to lecture at the Christchurch Polytechnic in 1995. During that time he arranged and conduct concerts for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. He formed and directed the Christchurch Jazz Arts Orchestra and Voiceworks Jazz Choir. In 1999 Wayne moved Auckland to create and administer the Jazz Studies program at the University.

Links to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixpxLO1FotM

Members $5 cash
Non-members $20 cash
(Non-member contact registration required at time of entry.)
Voluntary mask wearing.