Sooner or later, even energetic polymaths have to reduce their workloads. “I’m 77,” says William Dart in the rueful tone that’s so familiar to listeners of his beloved New Horizons show on RNZ Concert. Something has to give, and its last episode is scheduled for December 22. It has been running since 1980, its debut marked by a Listener cover story proclaiming: “Rock – 10-part radio series.”
That will still leave Dart his duties as editor of Art New Zealand magazine, his personal recording activities, concert reviews and a completist approach to Auckland art exhibition openings, which he attends assiduously and records in detail on social media.
Dart explains that a show about rock music on the classical network was the brainchild of RNZ Concert manager Helen Young. “I remember her talking to me on the staircase at Broadcasting House in 1979. ‘We’re going to try this, dear boy, and you might like to do it.’”
He has kept doing it since then, through controversy – pearls have been clutched – Covid and a 2012 stroke which slowed him down only briefly. He could still read music but not so easily words on a page.
The show has evolved to reflect his quirky – a word frequently deployed in Dart discourse – universalist and generous taste. This was not just a new release roundup, although keeping up with the latest from young artists and old favourites has always been part of the brief.
It has occasionally been hard to discern what the guiding principles are. “My tastes are just weirdly wide. And I have an obsession with collecting lots of versions of the same song. Another obsession is for music played badly. I did six programmes called The Weird and the Wacky, searching out richly unorthodox versions of Bach, Beethoven and other old masters. I remember a local composer coming up to me and publicly chiding me for wasting radio time. He apologised later.”
A show with such a broad brief gave him the opportunity to share music he prized and that otherwise might have gone unheard.
“Deep down, I’m a hard-core proselytiser. Even as a child, I was trying to organise little classes to teach other children. The other kids didn’t have any idea what I was doing.” That childhood impulse evolved into a career that has also included school and university teaching, songwriting, musical theatre composing and piano lessons for a lucky few.
Dart says opportunities have always come his way, serendipitous encounters leading to more possibilities than even he could take up. He was music adviser on Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, but when he was approached about another project – possibly one involving a piano – the preoccupied Dart “just didn’t reply, and I don’t know why. I just didn’t get around to it”.
Variety of format as well as content has been a hallmark of the show. It’s not just a puckish jukebox. There have been musician interviews; shows dedicated to multiple versions of a single song – Gershwin’s Summertime, The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby; tributes to artists on their deaths, including Lou Reed and Glen Campbell, and an unprecedented two shows devoted to David Bowie. Dart’s enthusiasm for Bowie’s seldom-noticed pre-Space Oddity work is typical of his idiosyncratic but well-argued opinions.
By now it will come as no surprise to learn that a collection produced by the US Audubon society, which celebrates the work of the 19th-century US ornithologist and bird painter, John James Audubon, was irresistible.
“I created a programme around For the Birds: The Birdsong Project, 20 magnificent LPs with profits going to the National Audubon Society. It featured people singing songs, plus people reading poetry: Tilda Swinton, Laurie Anderson, Loudon Wainwright. The chance came to buy all the albums, so I swooped in and got them all.”
Local music has always been to the fore. “In 2000, I spun a programme around the Baxter CD that Charlotte Yates got together. That album was a magical project and became one of the musical anchors in my New Zealand Music course at Waikato University.”
My tastes are just weirdly wide. And I have an obsession with collecting lots of versions of the same song.
Asked what a piece of music needs to earn his respect no matter the genre – in other words, what on Earth do all these things have in common? – Dart first proposes: “Intensity. Bach’s music can be so pungently and deliciously dissonant – the dissonances hold you there, until they resolve, creating an inevitable onward momentum. And I hear this same thing in the songs of Joni Mitchell.
“I’m always staggered at how much can be compressed into the few minutes of a song, and curiously both my masters and doctoral theses were on lieder and songs. I really appreciate the nuts and bolts of their structure, the sheer craft of a McCartney, a Mancini or a Bacharach.”
His eclectic outlook means that New Horizons was championing diversity from the get-go. “I’m quite proud of that. If you look through RNZ’s New Horizons website, which includes all my programmes back to mid-2012, there’s a carefully maintained balance. And throughout the programmes, there’s all kinds of styles. The Santa Claus show this year may include a trans song and one about a lesbian with her eye on the neglected Mrs Claus.”
Perhaps, he speculates, “being gay makes you a little bit more flexible, because we’re used to being a bit sidelined, and you’re more open to other ethnicities and issues of gender”.
The writing is a conspicuous feature of the programme, distinguished by Dart’s puckish and seductively slippery segues that could have listeners wondering where on Earth a sentence is going before he elegantly brings it home.
As he enters this home stretch, he can look back on a range of occasionally surprising feedback over the years. He treasures a recent email from Brian Carpenter, producer of Songs and Symphoniques, a tribute to (more-than-just-an-outsider) composer Moondog in February. It neatly summed up the New Horizons strategy: “The most insightful and brilliant commentary on our new record I have heard. I’m floored by this innovative use of the radio medium to review an album by narrating beautifully written essays over selected tracks.”
Production values
New Horizons’ debut producer was Pat Towsey. Tim Dodd, who will retire mid-2025, has been loving the role since 1999.
“I was excited to take over,” says Dodd, “because I admired William and his programme, a lot. I had a lot of respect for what he did, not only in New Horizons, but in other fields.” He has his own assessment of Dart’s achievement.
“He takes the art form of contemporary songwriting and pop, rock, whatever you want to call it, seriously. He listens intently to the music in order to come up with a considered position that’s based on a huge amount of knowledge and over a very wide range of music.”
Dodd’s role has been different from the traditional producer’s duties: “There wasn’t really a need for me to have an editorial position, checking over his script before he read it.”
That said, he has occasionally tried to have an influence.
“Bill Callahan is a wonderful American songwriter,” says Dodd. “Maybe 20 years ago I said to William: ‘You’ve never done a programme about Bill Callahan.’ And he sort of looked at me without making any real comment, and I didn’t mention it again, because I got the impression that he didn’t actually like Bill Callahan. Then, a number of weeks ago, he got a new live album from Bill Callahan and finally did a programme on him. And of course, he did have all the recordings.”
New Horizons, RNZ Concert, Sundays, 5.30pm
