Rodger Fox – synonymous with big band jazz in New Zealand – has died. He was 71.
The jazz legend founded the Rodger Fox Big Band in 1973 and toured extensively at home and abroad and played at international jazz festivals such as Montreux, Monterey and New Orleans.
The Christchurch-born musician also taught at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington.
Fox was just 18 when he started playing with a dance band in the Wellington/Porirua area.
“I was a bit like being eight years old and scratching at this violin and being taught by the nuns and Gore,” he told RNZ in 2015.
“But I perfected the hiccups. So it was great. So every time I went to class, I would have massive hiccups and I couldn't scratch a note in vain.
“After about three months, the dear old nuns called my parents together and said, 'I don't think Roger really wants to learn the violin, you know?'”
After playing the cornet and then the trumpet, he eventually ended up on the trombone.
In 2022 he was appointed Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM).
He told RNZ that year that two of the biggest highlights were performing at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival in Europe in 1980 – the first ever New Zealand band to be invited to play at an international jazz festival – and the visit of American jazz saxophonist Michael Brecker to New Zealand to celebrate this. the 30th anniversary of the Rodger Fox Big Band.
David Bremner has been the principal trombonist of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra for more than twenty years. He told RNZ Morning report program today it was an “incredibly sad time for the music industry” in New Zealand.
“So many rock bands, jazz musicians and classical artists all had inspiration from Rog early in their lives.”
Bremner said Fox was a “driving force” in music with boundless energy, especially when it came to educating and inspiring the next generation of musicians.
“Everyone knew that when they went [the New Zealand School of Music]they would form a sort of bond with Rodger Fox, and that was hugely inspiring for students to be a part of and become a great champion of New Zealand music.
Fox also took what was originally an American art form and gave it a Kiwi twist, Bremner said, working with the likes of Sir Dave Dobbyn and King Kapisi.
“He has always been deeply connected to the music that is being written here, but also to the kind of groundbreaking jazz music that is being produced and written abroad.
“I went to a concert a year or two ago where he had a lot of New Zealand composers writing big band music inspired by the poetry of Hone Tuwhare and it was one of the most inspiring concerts, it was just absolutely beautiful.
“And the way that each composer came from a different angle with a different poem was just very, very special, including a composition by Rog that he wrote, which was absolutely brilliant.”