WJC are proud to present our first emerging artist series in honour of the recent passing of jazz drummer and educator Roger Sellers.
Roger was a world-renowned musician who was possibly best known internationally for his work in the 1970\'s with the famous UK fusion band ‘Nucleus’ during the 1970’s and for his popular group ‘The Boptet’ which had a long-standing residency of more than 20 years at Lido Cafe in Wellington. Roger migrated to Wellington in 1981 where he devoted the remaining 38 years of his life to playing with, teaching, encouraging and inspiring students at the Wellington Poly-tech jazz conservatorium (now known as NZSM). Roger passed his knowledge and wisdom so gracefully onto thousands of budding young jazz students and in doing so gave them crucial industry skills and the confidence to go on to achieve great things on both the local and international scene.
This will be an annual event which will showcase two chosen emerging artists with outstanding talent in both performance and composition to present a suite of mostly original music with their groups at our WJC fortnightly head-liner series.
For this our inaugural concert we will be featuring bassist Phoebe Johnson with her quintet. Joining Phoebe are Lily Shaw (ts), Luca Sturney (g), Ben Stewart (p) and Olivia Campion (d).
For our second set we present trombonist Martin Greshoff with his septet. Joining Martin are James Guilford-Smith (t), Louisa Williamson (s), Nicholas baucke-Maunsell (s), Leonardo Coghini (p), Seth Boy (b) and James Feekes (d).
