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John Rimmer: Accomplished musician, teacher, bandmaster and composer

November 14th, 2011
By David Armstrong

Motueka's gentle lifestyle attracts many retired people, some bringing with them talents which lift the community. One of New Zealand's eminent musicians, John Rimmer, is a great example through his contribution to the musical life of Motueka.

After a life learning and teaching music in some of the country's top establishments and composing many well-loved pieces, John and his wife Helen (also musically talented) chose to retire to Tapu Bay and to help open musical gateways for the next two generations down.

John was born in 1939 and raised in Takapuna, Auckland, where he lived until he was 26. He went to Takapuna Grammar School and the University of Auckland.

His mother bought a piano when John was 6, and he used to tinker on it playing tunes he'd heard on the radio by ear, and making up his own little pieces. When he was 8 he started piano lessons, which he continued for 11 years, taking him through the steps required to finally gain his LTCL (Licentiate Trinity College of London) teachers diploma.

The Rimmer family includes a first cousin twice removed, William Rimmer, who was one of the world's best known conductors and composers of brass band music early in the 20th century in the UK. His marches are broadcast often on Radio New Zealand and played in band competitions to this day (as are many of John's compositions - but more on that later).

During his last two years at school, John learned to play the cornet in the Takapuna Municipal brass band. "I loved playing the piano, but I wanted the challenge of learning another instrument," he says. And being part of a band, the cornet is much less a solitary instrument than a piano. "The social interaction at the time was good, particularly at the age of 17 or 18."

After leaving school, he first tried his hand in the accounting profession but lasted a year before finding it quite boring. "But looking back, the year I had in the business world was quite useful," he adds.

He decided that teaching would better suit his interests and abilities. So it was off to university for three years, and he entered Secondary Teachers College with a Bachelor of Arts covering a range of subjects, which ultimately led to teaching mainly music but also mathematics and English and occasionally German. (Musicians often have a mathematical bent.)

When he began full-time at Uni he left the brass band. A performance by the Auckland Junior Symphony Orchestra and hearing Dennis Brain playing some horn concertos of Mozart on the radio ("I was bowled over by that") led him to start lessons on the French horn from the professor of music at Auckland University and prominent conductor, Charles Nalden. "He was a very significant influence in my early musical life," John says.

Nalden gave all the orchestra's horn players a year's free lessons to start them off, a practice which John has introduced to Motueka in recent years.

From there on John played horn in various orchestras and chamber music concert groups, including the 75-piece National Youth Orchestra. Aged around 20, he also began attending the Cambridge Summer Music School in Waikato, a formative experience in which he met top quality young musicians from all around New Zealand.

"There was a choir, an orchestra; there was a composers group," he recalls. "All these musicians would interact for two weeks in January in idyllic surroundings." He did that for seven summers.

When he was at university, John got involved in church life, increasingly as he opened up to new learning. It started with singing sacred music, such as masses and 16th century motets, as a tenor in a university choir. He joined the Presbyterian church, but his faith developed slowly, mainly through the group of people he mixed with over the years.

"My Christian belief is an equally important part of my life, along with music," he says. "I think I've always had a strong religious bent. It seems to me it's perfectly natural to accept that there's some reason why we live and some reason for being, and that there's some kind of life force if you like.

"I don't think of God as a theistic being, like someone up in the sky who occasionally intervenes in world affairs. God for me is more the all-encompassing spirit in whom we live and move and have our being." He adds to this the desire to be involved in what the church has to offer by way of helping other people.

In the mid-1960s he met Helen, who was also in the Auckland Junior Symphony Orchestra as an oboist and pianist. She was accompanist to John's French horn, and was also training to be a secondary school teacher. When they were married, they both went teaching, John to Westlake Boys High School and Helen to Northcote College.

In the mid-60s, John was becoming more interested in composing music. He had done an MA in music history, and did part-time units towards a Bachelor of Music degree, one subject of which was composition under the tutelage of well-known New Zealand composer Ronald Tremain. He studied composition for three years, including a year at the University of Toronto on a Canadian Commonwealth scholarship.

In Canada his interests widened further to include jazz and the earliest types of electronic music from newly invented sound synthesisers. This year was followed by a six-month tour of Europe for John and Helen.

They returned to Auckland in 1969, and from here on through until John's retirement in 1999 there is a string of challenges and experience as a musician, teacher and composer. They included years playing horn with the Auckland Symphonia, and teaching brass instruments privately, training primary teachers at North Shore Teachers College how to teach music.

In 1972 he was awarded the one-year Mozart Fellowship to be Composer in Residence at the University of Otago. He worked with several top-ranking musicians there, such as Maurice Till. John's task was to write music and teach some composition classes.

In 1974 he was asked to join the music staff at Auckland University, teaching composition. That began a 25-year career which culminated in John being the professor in charge of the School of Music before he retired.

"This involved a lot of music making in the community, getting out and about selling the subject to the community, creating networks on behalf of the university," he says. "I became involved in teacher training. I was a member of the national syllabus committee which revised the music curriculum from childhood through to form 7."

This included getting composing into the curriculum, and getting musical performance going so students could received credit for it. "That unleashed a whole world of music making in secondary schools" such as the Smokefree Rock Quests and other institutions.

Through these years, John continued to compose music in whatever spare time he could manage, including many commissioned pieces.

After he retired from the University of Auckland in 1999 he was Composer in Residence for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for two years, writing mainly orchestral music and later brass band music for the national champion A grade brass band in 2003, Dalewool Auckland Brass. During this time he rejoined the brass band movement and played the tenor horn in the Band of the Royal Regiment New Zealand Artillery stationed in Auckland.

Most of his pieces have been played by the NZSO, and many are played on Radio New Zealand Concert from time to time. "It gives me a lot of satisfaction to hear a piece [of mine] played, and particularly when it's done very well," he says.

From 1982 John attended a young composers workshop in Nelson every year, and grew to become fond of the region and what it had to offer, and when Helen retired in 2006 they decided to move here to live. A catalyst for the decision was the middle of his three sons (including two grandchildren) becoming a teacher at Garin College.

Retirement in Motueka has not meant much in the way of feet up and slippers. John and Helen became involved in the St Andrews Uniting Church, and both are now on the parish council and sing in the choir, of which John is conductor.

Both also are involved with the local brass band, the Motueka District Brass - Helen plays the percussion and John conducts and sometimes plays cornet. An important part of his work there is fostering and teaching a new generation of brass players. Mindful that the old band was getting more "senior citizens" with every passing year, he started a learners group and beginners band three years ago.

Advertising attracted about 20 people, so more instruments were bought and the learners band began. Students pay $40 per year for the hire of their instruments but otherwise lessons are free, with the only understanding being that capable students make themselves available to play in the band. Four players do the teaching.

After two years a handful of those beginners are now starting to play in the senior band, and John expects perhaps 10 of the 20 will move up in 2012. He is particularly interested in watching parents learn next to children - three or four parent-child couples are currently in the learners band.

John and Helen are also involved in Probus and have adopted a Keep Motueka Beautiful plot in the Inlet Reserve. He has conducted combined church choirs and had a major role in the recording of the TV hymn programme "Praise Be" early this year.

John says he is "totally pleased" that they moved to Motueka. "We've found that most of the things we need are in the town, and there's a very good hospital in Nelson. There are top-class medical people there - I think the climate must attract people from all over New Zealand to work in this area.

"There are lots of community groups, especially for older people. And the great work that's been done to refurbish Memorial Hall and its acoustics for concerts. Then you've got the larger churches where you can use for performances, and of course the lovely Chanel Arts Centre, which is terrific for chamber music.

"Plus the things that go on at the Rec Centre, which seems to cater for youth very well; the skateboard park; people working away at community garden projects and so on. If you want to get out and about, there's stuff there for everyone."

 
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