STACK NZ Nov #57

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Age Pryor (bottom left)and the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra

AGE PRYOR

Your debut album Be MineTonight is made up of covers of Kiwi classics – how did you narrow down the final list? Firstly we made a huge list of NZ songs that all the band members suggested. After an initial edit, we played through as many of them as we could to hear how they might sound on the ukulele. The songs that work best normally stand out straight away. We also wanted to cover as broad a range of NZ music as possible, from the old to the very new, and including pacific and te reo Maori pieces as well. Adapting and arranging the songs for ukulele is a really enjoyable process. The 11 band members have very different styles and skills in their playing and singing. So we have fun mixing and matching those skills to suit each song. When a song starts to take shape with all the elements combined it’s really exciting. What was the trickiest song to convert? Team by Lorde was pretty interesting, because the original is more of an electronic How hard was it to adapt the songs for the ukulele? production. Bringing the warmth and acoustic sound of ukes to that made for a nice blend. What production challenges does the ukulele present when it comes to recording? The ukulele is a quiet instrument, and for both recording and live performance it takes a lot of care to capture the uke’s natural warm tone. Neil Maddever was our recording engineer for this album and he specialises in live acoustic recording, so that helped us a lot in achieving the sound we wanted.

Have any of the original artists heard your versions?What do you reckon they will make of them? Not many have heard our versions yet – we really hope they like them! Flight of the Conchords’ Bret Mckenzie was a co-founder of the orchestra: how good a ukulele player is he? Bret is a great musician but we haven’t yet done any formal examinations of his ukulele technique. Next time we see him we’ll sit him down and work out his ranking. When was the last time that he played with the orchestra and is there any chance of some future guest appearances? He hasn’t played with us for a while now. Because our band has always had the same line-up from the beginning, we think of the 12 players as permanent members, even though we don’t always have them with us. So hopefully Bret will join us again some time soon, but if he doesn’t, that’s fine. We mix and match pretty easily these days, depending on people’s availability. Aside from the orchestra, what are your plans for the next 12 months – any new solo or band projects on the go? Yes, I’m starting up a couple of new projects for 2015, and will be focusing on new original material. Working with the ukulele orchestra is fantastic and I also need to balance it with other personal creative work, so 2015 is my year for that! What was the last DVD you bought? Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises – I love his films.

For those who haven’t heard you guys yet, tell us a little aboutWellington International Ukulele Orchestra? We’re an 11-piece band comprising 10 ukulele players who also all sing and a bass player who doesn’t sing - although we keep trying to get him to sing because he’s really got a good voice! We play cover versions of songs we like and arrange them to sound extra special for the ukulele. We love to arrange extravagant harmonies to sing too. We formed nine years ago in a really small cafe inWellington called Deluxe. We didn’t get together on purpose. It just happened because the members were all regular coffee drinkers at Deluxe. Composer, performer and producer, Age Pryor has been a key figure on the New Zealand music scene for more than 20 years. As well as solo albums such as Shank’s Pony and City Chorus, he was one of the original members of the collaborative ensembles Fly My Pretties and TheWoolshed Sessions. Pryor is also the musical director and executive manager of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, who release their debut album this month.

NOVEMBER 2014 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.co.nz

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