Mozart to your ears
Musical fiend Robbie Ellis mixes musical passions.
“When I was 16 I emailed the contact for performance troupe The Con Artists and said I was a musician, that I could do this,” explains Ellis, who attended Auckland’s Westlake Boy’s High and had played keyboard since he was just five. He got a return email inviting him to compete in an interschool competition.
“I went along. A couple of weeks later I was playing music for professional actors; Shortland Street people and radio DJs,” says Ellis, who is now 26, “It was a buzz at 16.”
He uses two keyboards at once to keep the transitions between sounds fluid.
“I would like a third hand to do this sometimes,” he laughs. Ellis, who has been in Wellington for over three years after studying arts and music in Auckland, says there are several key skills a good improv musician needs to have down pat, including an awareness of volume, knowledge of current events, sensitivity to the mood of the scene and a flexible mindset.
“When your ideas don’t work you have to be prepared to just throw them away. Act in the moment, not in your head,” he explains, adding that some improv musicians go as far as applying Buddhist teachings to the art.
“You can get really New Age about it. There’s a Chicago podcast called Zenprov I listen to but I haven’t gone as far as that,” he chuckles, “It’s nice when everyone knows the conventions, though, and you just rock up to a gig and get going.”
His favourite sounds on the keyboards are an electric piano patch, full in the bass, a brass ensemble he uses for dramatic finales, “when everything is happy again,” and anyone who comes regularly will recognise his favourite Bollywood sounds.
Ellis, whose day job is producing and presenting at Radio New Zealand Concert, has just been named the Otago University Mozart Fellow for 2012, and plans to use the time to write a major musical theatre piece.
“Strictly speaking I’ve co-written 78 musicals to date, but 77 of them were created live in front of an audience…[During the Fellowship] it will be different producing a work that is not written on the night.”
The festival programme can be found at http://nzif.wit.org.nz/programme
New Zealand Improv Festival, Bats Theatre, 6.30-11.30pm, October 11-15.
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