Robbie Ellis

My desk at Radio New Zealand. I promise I'll leave it tidier than this.

I’m leaving Radio New Zealand Concert, finishing up in mid-January. (That said, I’ll stay involved as an external freelance contributor to programmes like Composer of the Week, The Critic’s Chair, Upbeat etc.)

My bosses have advertised my job and you can apply for it. I have reduced the job summary to a haiku:

…strong…working…artists…
…unusual blend…and…desire…
…celebrate…to hear…

That’s all you really need to know. I mean, you can send away for an actual full job description if you like but those things are always so full of HR waffle. Trust me, it’s a good job.

Applications close at 5pm on Monday 5 December 2011.

The title is now a misnomer in a way, but it’s been in my repertoire since May and I just had to put it up on the web to mark the occasion.

If you don’t get it, this may help.

Thanks to Bonnie Riley (whose name is ever so close to Bonnie Tyler) for the non-lead vocals and to Sam Smith for lending me his guitar and amp. Also credit is due to Joseph Sherman-Mendez, Chaz Harris and Morgan Samuel of Seriously Tanked (my 2011 48Hours Furious Filmmaking team-mates) for the initial inspiration. (This happened the same weekend.)

This has been a great excuse to get to grips with video editing software, in this case Final Cut Express. Audio I’ve always been fine with, video has long eluded me.

Also, I’d like to share a graphic which I prepared before the announcement but didn’t get to use in the video:

My new default publicity shot accompanied by my new default publicity shot credit. (Photo: Gareth Watkins / Lilburn Trust / Wallace Arts Trust)

A couple of months ago, I was photographed by Gareth Watkins. Gareth is a photographer, media producer and a work colleague of mine (by day he’s a studio engineer at Radio New Zealand).

He had asked me to be part of Composer 015 – a project to photograph and interview 15 New Zealand composers aged from their mid-20s to their early 90s! It’s currently a work in progress, supported by the Lilburn Trust and the Wallace Arts Trust. I believe that once the photos are compiled, they’ll be published in book form… I think that’s right? I should probably know.

Anyway, the pictures went up on the web yesterday and I’m really happy with them! I did veto four that you won’t see – one really looked like my criminal mugshot, and in another I was smiling but squinting a bit too tightly.

We did the photographs at Gareth’s house in Mt Cook, Wellington and in the grounds of the National War Memorial. Gareth by no means objects to smiley photographs, but it’s clear to see he leans towards capturing a neutral expression. (That is the viewpoint of an uninformed photography neophyte, but I can see it in other composers in the series: Alex Taylor; Claire Cowan; Jack Body; Lyell Cresswell; Samuel Holloway.)

An objective of mine was to get plenty of good publicity shots, so I came out very happy – a very real preoccupation since I’ve always felt subconscious about holding a smile on cue.

The full collection of 24 photos is here, and on that same page you can also listen to audio of me talking about composing or some such. Here are my favourite shots: