The Rodger Fox Big Band, featuring King Kapisi, and with Erna Ferry

Globe One - Globe Theatre   Palmerston North   Sun 3 Sep 2023

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Wakatipu High School   Queenstown   Thu 19 Oct 2023

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Civic Theatre   Invercargill   Fri 20 Oct 2023

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Oamaru Opera House   Oamaru   Sat 21 Oct 2023

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The Piano: Centre for Music and the Arts   Christchurch   Sun 22 Oct 2023

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Michael Fowler Centre   Wellington   Fri 27 Oct 2023

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‘Brotherman – Crossover Thoughts’ is a project that infuses the modern big band sound with that of Aotearoa-New Zealand Hip-hop. This would be achieved by blending the sound of the Rodger Fox Big Band with that of iconic New Zealand hip-hop artist King Kapisi.

King Kapisi was the first hip-hop artist in New Zealand to receive the prestigious Silver Scroll Award at the APRA Awards for Songwriter of the Year for his single Reverse Resistance in 1999. King Kapisi's music and lyrics raise issues relevant to Pacific Island people living in New Zealand. King Kapisi keeps his music ‘real’ by rapping about his Pacific heritage and the hip-hop scene. He uses hip-hop to promote the message of ‘keeping it real’ through your culture, learning your language, and knowing ‘where you are from’.

The Rodger Fox Big Band is widely acknowledged as New Zealand’s leading exponent of big band music and, over its long history, has over 90 New Zealand compositions to its name and has recorded 76 of these compositions. The big band has also always extended the members of the band by working with some of the jazz world’s greatest artists including Michael Brecker, Mike Stern and Kurt Elling. In recent years this has included collaborations with international classical artists Michael Houstoun and Simon O’Neill– Classical meets Jazz – and the Big Band’s most recent CD release Reimagined! The Rodger Fox Big Band plays Sir Dave Dobbyn.

The Big Band would now like to further extend the concept by curating a project that brings together the Aotearoa-New Zealand hip-hop sound with that of the Rodger Fox Big Band.

This project would be highly anticipated by the New Zealand arts community, especially at this time when we are constantly reminded to ‘keep it local’ so recording and reimaged arrangements of King Kapisi’s iconic material would give this material a new and different voice.

Ten new arrangements will be commissioned for the recording and made available to New Zealand school jazz bands and local community big bands. Where possible we would like to present this music in concert form to show the New Zealand public that togetherness can be achieved through this type of cross-over project by like-minded people working together, in this case, King Kapisi and Rodger Fox.