Blair
Latham
Jazz
Saxophone
Bass Clarinet
& More
Compositions
Blair introduces some of the tunes that he's written over the years
In 2020 I was commissioned to write a long form piece of music for the band The Noveltones to be performed at the Wellington Jazz Festival as part of their headline series. The growing economic disparity through the use of housing as a speculative asset was my starting point. A little serious no doubt, but kinda pertinent. Andy Wright did some wonderful visuals, where he took the theme of divide as his starting point. I think this all came out pretty well, the visuals are amazing and the band was fun to work so much with.
I've been playing more and more guitar. This tune came from years of loving playing and hearing Eric Dolphy's Serene combined with plenty of blues guitar jamming that's happening in the last little bit. The title came about after realising that alhough the melody is angular and 'bluesy', it does have a lot of nice sounding major thirds......
The Girl Goes Pop
While playing on the cruise ships I met a wide variety of people. Amongst them was a singer who had done the gig for a long time. She is beautiful, a lovely person and a professional when it comes to the work. She had ‘enhanced’ her body at one stage in order to add more oomph to her profile, and this enhancement was a topic of conversation. She herself had some regrets…..anyway this song is about the things that we do in order to succeed, and whether that’s always worth it. This version was recorded for my Honours studies, it has a beautiful rendition of some of the only lyrics I’ve ever tried to write sung by Nils Olsen at the end.
Don’t be so Harsh (1st Edition)
I think a lot of us can have a tendency to judge others, or ourselves, harshly. This is an ode to that thought that counters this, the “just take it easy there mate”.
This tune is divided into two parts, an eight bar ballad stated by bass then violin with bass clari, then sax followed by a sax solo. The second half gets a little more lively. Enjoy