After 17 years hosting Nights, RNZ presenter Bryan Crump heads over to our fine music network RNZ Concert this month.
He joins Kim Hill to play some favourite songs and chat about his career.
'Your future is with your voice', a German singing teacher once said to Bryan Crump.
But although he was once a member of the London Philharmonic Chorus, Bryan says he never had the talent or drive to become a professional singer.
"To become one's own instrument – which is what an opera singer has to be – [requres] huge amounts of energy and mental strength and stamina."
If he wasn't going to sing for a living, Bryan was confident he had a good enough voice to make a play for the radio microphone.
"I'm blessed with a musicality which I think also helps me to use that voice and to use sound … and I think I like talking and I like playing with sound.'
"Sound is the sense that really stimulates me… it delights me and scares me, so it was radio or bust."
To make a start, he phoned the BBC, found out the type of sound recorder their reporters used, bought one and started making audio stories, including pieces on Smithfield Market (a meatpacking house) and the notorious ex-pat venue The Church.
On his travels around Europe, Bryan also sent a series of touristy postcards - signed 'Crumpy' - to the then-chief executive of Radio New Zealand Sharon Crosbie.
'Just who is this 'Crumpy'?' the final one read. 'He's just what you need on National Radio'.
Bryan Crump Photo: Supplied
Returning to New Zealand in 1993, Bryan landed a job as an RNZ rural reporter based in Dunedin, later working on the RNZ programmes Country Saturday and Country Life before signing up to host Nights.
After 17 years of presenting that show every weeknight – "a fair chunk of somebody's life" – he's looking forward to seeing some gigs and spending more time with his son John.
"[In the evenings] I'll now have a whole hour and a half to say 'get off your tablet'."
Joining RNZ Concert is something Bryan has been interested in trying for a while.
"Luckily enough a job came up and allowed me to go with the same conditions and pay that I have now at RNZ National, for which I feel really grateful.
"Music is a huge part of my life and trying to build RNZ Concert so they won't ever dare try and kill it again sounds like a good challenge for the next ten years or so, if they let me stay that long."
Before starting his new job as RNZ Concert's afternoon presenter, Bryan and his family will take a week-long holiday at the historic Ormondville railway station – a place where freight trains "sound like they're coming through your lounge when they go past".
Ormondville has been their family getaway spot for over a decade but Bryan says first took his partner Penny there he incorrectly guessed that she'd be over it after a couple of days.
"She liked the old-school nature of the place … and she loves sheep farms. I don't know why but she does."
Listen to The Doubtful Sounds - the Wellington choir Bryan conducts - live on RNZ
Watch The Doubtful Sounds' cover of Nick Cave's 'The Ship Song':
Bryan Crump played:
Guiseppe Verdi - 'Messa da Requiem: IIa. Sequence, Dies irae - Tuba mirum'
Crump family legend has it that the child Bryan's destruction of his father's beloved Verdi recording was what turned him into an atheist.
Later, while living in London, Bryan sang the same piece with the London Philharmonia Chorus who'd also performed the version on his father's original LP.
"To be singing in that was…. I thought this is better than drugs, it's better than any drugs."
Aitutaki Enua Culture Group - 'The Legend Of Ironui Maota'
Bryan says he was a "racist little kid", afraid of brown-skinned people before his family moved to Herne Bay in the 1970s.
"I don't think my parents were that racist but there was that whole paranoia about overstayers and all that stuff. It obviously got into me ... we had this [racist] bullshit that was somehow slipped in there."
Later, at a high school with 30 to 40 percent Pacific Island students, the boys' improvisational lunchtime percussion made a huge impact on young Bryan.
"I just thought it was magical. I wished I could drum like they could but I couldn't."
Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - 'Status Back Baby'
Bryan's elder brother Peter introduced him to Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan.
"Zappa was like rock'n'roll that was funny … In my awkward early teenage years when I had acne, braces and glasses and Zappa was taking the mickey out of the high school jocks that kind of appealed to me at the time. And also he's a musical genius.
"He quotes [the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky] halfway through this song … halfway through the music stops and he starts quoting [Stravinsky's 1911 orchestral work] 'Petrushka'. And then he goes back to the song again."
Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy - 'When the Spirit Returns'
Bryan wants this track by American jazz trumpet player Lester Bowie played at his funeral.
"Lester plays wrong notes and only a really good musician can play wrong notes well… he's got a sense of humour.
"It's a spiritual piece with a sense of humour, because if god doesn't have a sense of humour… there is sadness in this song but there's also laughter."
