Conductor first turned on by Mahler

By WILLIAM DART


An American friend has just sent me a programme from last month's 21st Annual Awards of the Los Angeles Jazz Society. Alongside names like Quincy Jones and Keely Smith is New Zealand-born Alan Broadbent, who carried off this year's composer/arranger award.

"Have you heard of this man?" my friend has written alongside Broadbent's name. "He played and he is, of course, terrific."

Serendipity strikes again. As it happened, just a day before, Broadbent had allowed me to intrude on his Thanksgiving morning to find out something of what we might expect on Saturday when he's in town, conducting the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Broadbent has built up a reputation for some of the smoothest arrangements around and, for this man, standards are where it's at. The "infinitely malleable" songs of Porter, Rodgers and Kern provide him with "a form of self-expression that's almost an inner compulsion".

And you won't find Broadbent searching today's charts. "It seems to me they have taken out all the hard parts like the melody and harmony; it's too simplistic. It's just the same three chords and if I try to add to them it loses the intent of the sound. How can I reharmonise a Michael Jackson or Madonna tune? Take the production away and there's nothing I can do with it to make it my own."

Perhaps you've sampled this man's expertise with a chart without realising it when you've been listening to the likes of Diana Krall, Jane Monheit, Michael Feinstein and Mel Torme. Two Broadbent arrangements for Natalie Cole (1997's When I Fall in Love) and Charlie Haden (2000's Lonely Town) earned him Grammy Awards.

But then singers have always been special, starting with the late Irene Kral with whom he worked in the 70s (their 1974 Where is Love album is a classic). She was a model for the young Broadbent "in her ability to communicate the lyric and also the way she could engage the trio. There are singers who just sing the way they sing no matter what you do, but there are also special singers who are affected by the way you play a chord and by the accompaniment behind them. Irene was one of those".

We are getting one of the best on Saturday when Tierney Sutton joins him on the town hall stage on Saturday night. "Tierney is also a musician," Broadbent explains. "She knows the chords and she arranges herself, so there's a real collaboration."

The other class attraction for Broadbent is the NZSO for "the beauty of sound from one of the great orchestras. The strings will be a principal attraction because the synthesiser can never emulate them. You have 50 people vibrating separately on a particular note that I wrote and those vibrations are all mixing in the air together".

Heady stuff this, and it's only too clear that Broadbent is a man who takes his popular music very seriously, a man who wants to "communicate this message of feeling. We're so bombarded with noise, there's noise wherever you go. I would just like to slow it all down and give us time to absorb some music".

The man laughs when I ask him how he would place his work in terms of a musical style. He's quick to credit the importance of "the tradition" and explains how everything has come through a life of listening. Ten years spent as Nelson Riddle's pianist were seminal. Another great mentor was Johnny Mandel. "When I was conducting for Natalie, there were some of Johnny's scores in the box just lying there and I spent my free hours just thumbing through them."

Saturday night's programme will balance offerings from Sutton and the orchestra alongside turns by Broadbent and his Trio, with Putter Smith on bass and New Zealand legend Frank Gibson on drums.

There are some unexpected Kiwi connections with the music, too: Kurt Weill's song My Ship has something to do with the boat Broadbent took from Wellington 36 years ago.

"I took a boat to New York, and can you believe it, it took me a month."

There was a time, before that Berklee Scholarship took him to Boston in 1966, when Broadbent was following the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms trail. While his classical background has always informed his piano stylings, it was another composer who has influenced him most as an arranger.

"I was one of those people who had their life changed by Mahler. His music completely turned me around because for the first time I made the connection between feelings and orchestration. It was a breakthrough. It's one thing to study about flutes and such but when they're connected to your heart and the way you feel, it changes everything. It was Mahler's orchestration that made the connection for me and I think people will hear that on Saturday.

"I wish he were alive today," Broadbent reflects wistfully. "I'd like to play him some stuff."

And what might be the right pitch to catch Mahler's attention, I ask?

Broadbent comes back to earth, laughs and proffers, "Hey! listen to this, Gus."

Performance

* What: The NZSO with Alan Broadbent and Tierney Sutton

* Where & when: Auckland Town Hall, Saturday, 8pm