Jazz On the Village Green - Kingsley Spargo

Kingsley Spargo
A three-piece performance trio featuring Kingsley Melhuish (guitar, voice, pūmoana, trumpet) Kim Meredith (poet and spoken tale) with Chris Orange (double bass, vocals).

The compositions of Napier man Kingsley Melhuish bring these works to life. Auckland based for the past three decades, the vocalist, musician and sound artist riffs heavily on soundscape and darkness to transfix audiences with Meredith’s tales. His broad sound palette both captivates and confronts.

Drawing across theatre, free improvised and contemporary music his most recent compositions include narratives of yearning and the geometry of life. No stranger to the stage, he has delighted audiences alongside Don McGlashan, SJD, Eve de Castro Robinson, Tim Finn, Violent Femmes and Witi Ihimaera.

Poet Kim Meredith shouts of epochs in the 21st century, the daughter of a migrant with Hollywood dreams manifesting in popcorn love, she calls on her ancestors to bring her complex modern tales to the stage.

Ever the musical anarchist, bass man Chris Orange’s pedigree spans the golden era of ‘70’s Auckland punk (Terrorways, The Features) to free jazz in Japan, and here he adds texture, colour and a sense of lightness to the heavy themes of a 21st century conversation.