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Brian Smith, a local musician with a long pedigree, is among the lineup at Sunday afternoon jazz sessions at Paraoa in Whangaparaoa.
Now in his eighties, Brian says he has been playing jazz “all his life”.
The Stanmore Bay resident’s long career as a jazz saxophone and flute player includes touring Europe and America in the 1960s and 70s, playing at venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in London, and concerts with Dusty Springfield and the Four Tops.
He has toured New Zealand with Howard Morrison and Billy T James, and made two chart-topping albums – the first, in 1990, was called Moonlight Sax.
But it all began humbly enough, with childhood piano lessons in the small rural town of Toko in Taranaki.
“Back then I used to get together with my friends and try to play jazz – it was always my first love,” Brian says. “And that’s what I’m still trying to do!”
He plays now in a long standing trio – Bruce Lynch on bass, whom Brian has known since they met in the 1970s in London, and Dean Kerr on guitar.
Locally, he has performed at Muldoons and Downbeat in Ōrewa before the current gig at Pararoa.
Jazz seems to sit well on a Sunday afternoon, and Brian is hoping the sessions, which go from 4pm-6.30pm, draw bigger crowds as Covid has hit the entertainment industry hard.
Also playing on alternate Sundays are a young group of jazz musicians called the George Brajkovich Quartet.
Pararoa has also recently introduced Open Mic nights, with a backing band supplied.
They are held on the first Thursday of each month, so the next one is scheduled for Thursday April 7.
