Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Club Night 4th November 2025
What a great night of entertainment to start off our new Club Rooms venue at the Chelsea Room, Knightsbridge Retirement Village, Windsor Park. We had a full house to enjoy the entertainment which started with Patrick McMillan providing the arrival music. Next up, our guest artists, Conundrum, gave us a great concert with their amazing eclectic mix of genres of music. Energetic, dynamic, and enthusiastic professionalism would be the way to describe their performance. After a great supper provided by our wonderful Catering Manager, Jan Ellin, we held our raffle and then we were entertained by Warren Levick, who played some brief pieces but showed how he constructed the layered sounds for each song. Very interesting and informative and showing the versatility of our wonderful Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809.
Next up, Gordon Sutherland played four pieces on his Korg Pa5X with added vocals for spice! To finish the evening, Patrick McMillan gave us a mini concert on the Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano.
The Videos:
Video of our Guest Artists, Conundrum, to follow
The Photos:
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| Members and visitors getting ready for the evening's entertainment |
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| Our Door staff handling the entry fees and raffle tickets. Ken Mahy on the left, Murray McLachlan on the right with Warren Levick having a chat |
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| Warren Levick playing and demonstrating some of the features of our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
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| Patrick McMillan provided the arrival music and gave a closing evening's performance |
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| Gordon Sutherland played his Korg Pa5X arranger keyboard |
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| Our guest artists, Conundrum. L:R Linda Hobbs, Cathy Busbridge, Jeff Hobbs, Peter Thomas, and Julia Withers on drums. |
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| Our guest artists, Conundrum. L:R Linda Hobbs, Cathy Busbridge, Jeff Hobbs, Julia Withers on drums, and Peter Thomas. |
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| Our guest artists, Conundrum |
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Club Night 7th October 2025
What a wonderful night of music! The Club is blessed with some wonderful musicians, and they demonstrated their talent by playing some delightful music for us this evening. To start the evening, instead of the usual arrival music, we had a video of one of our previous guest artists, Dean Tremlett (bass) and Darin Smith (piano) who gave a concert for us back in September 2023. Great to watch their concert again.
In the main body of the evening, we were entertained by Mary Elvin who played a mix of classical and popular music - very well-done Mary. Next up we had Hana and mum, Yuko Tani, playing for 30 minutes with a mixture of solo pieces and duets. Wonderful music and Hana surely showed her World class talent. They played a mixture of classical (Beethoven) through popular music such as Bohemian Rhapsody and all most enjoyable.
After a delicious supper kindly supplied by our Catering Manager, Jan Ellin, we were entertained by our guest artist for the evening. Patrick McMillan. Patrick made good use of our Yamana Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano with some rhythms used as background to some pieces. A highlight was a classical organ piece by Beethoven - very powerful and superbly executed. Thanks for a great concert, Patrick.
This was our last event at the Takapuna Bowling Club that we have had rooms at for over 17 years. The Bowling Club has been very good to us over the years but with some of our members advancing in years, climbing the stairs was becoming problematic. Our new home from November 2025 onwards will be Knightsbridge Village, Windsor Park. They have allocated The Chelsea Room for our Club Rooms, and we are much looking forward to our new musical adventures there.
The Videos:
playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809
on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809
Mary Elvin playing for the Club
on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809
The Photos:
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| Hana Tani playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
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| Hana and Yuko Tani duetting on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
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| Oue guest artist, Patrick McMillan, playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Coffee Day at William Sanders Village
This was the Club's first visit to this beautiful Village. An excellent turnout of our members and enthusiastic residents enjoyed a great day of music on their superb Yamaha grand piano. Our President, Gordon Sutherland, also brought along his Korg Pa5X Arranger Keyboard to add an orchestral dimension to the entertainment. The Management made us most welcome, and we had full use of their PA system in the expansive lounge area. All in all, a very successful day sharing our music/musicians with the residents.
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| Claude Moffat playing the Yamaha grand piano |
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| Patrick McMillan playing the Yamaha grand piano |
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| John Mercer on debut playing the Yamaha grand piano. Well done, John! |
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| Murray McLachlan on debut playing the Yamaha grand piano. Well done also, Murray! |
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| Gordon Sutherland playing his Korg Pa5X arranger keyboard, with orchestrations and vocals to boot! |
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| Mary Barrett playing the Yamaha grand piano |
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| Graeme Webber playing the Yamaha grand piano |
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| Denise Gunson playing the Yamaha grand piano |
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Club Night for September 2025
What a great night of musical entertainment. We had visitors from all around Auckland that came especially to listen to our guest artist, Taka Iida, play his Yamaha Electone Stagea Portable two-manual keyboard and pedalboard. What a great performance Taka gave us on his magnificent keyboard - a mixture of very melodic Japanese orchestral ballads and jazz standards. Arrival music was kindly provided by Patrick McMillan on our Clavinova - thank you so much for your beautiful arrangements.
In the second set, after a refreshing coffee break, we were entertained firstly by member and music teacher Wu Liu and two of his students with both solo songs and duets. Wonderful music and very talented youngsters playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809. Next, Linus Treefoot brought along his Korg Havian 30 ensemble piano and entertained us with four songs and vocals - some original compositions and all very musical and fun to listen to! Finally, Warren Levick played the Clavinova using both the styles and in one case splitting the keyboard to play chords on the lower manual and melody on the right-hand manual - keyboard style. Great choice of songs and executed very nicely indeed. Well done, Warren.
The Videos:
Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano
L to R: Jayden Zhang, Gordon Sutherland, Wu Liu, Orianna Jing
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| L to R: Jayden Zhang, Gordon Sutherland, Wu Liu, Orianna Jing. Jayden and Orianna played a sole piece and a duet with Wu for us. Delightful. |
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| Linus Treefoot on keys and Len Hancy vocals |
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| Linus Treefoot playing his Korg Havian 30 with added vocals |
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| Arrivals Music provided by Patrick McMillan on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
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| Member and music teacher, Wu Liu playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
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| Wu Liu duetting with his student |
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| Wu Liu duetting with his student |
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| One of Wu Liu's students playing solo on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
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| One of Wu Liu's students playing solo on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 |
Warren Levick playing the Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809  |
| Our guest artist, Taka Iida, playing his Yamaha Electone Stagea two-manual portable keyboard and pedalboard |
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Coffee Day at Fairview Lifestyle Village
We always have a great day entertaining the residents (and our members) on Coffee Days at this lovely village. We had an enthusiastic audience of residents and our members that came along to enjoy the day. Plenty of good and varied styles of music in opulent surroundings and excellent cuisine provided by the kitchen staff. It was good that we had three of our members playing that are also residents of the Village as well as a guest appearance of a resident who played the grand piano with a jazz focus.
The Photos:
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| Gordon Sutherland playing his Korg Pa5X arranger keyboard |
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| Resident and Club member Mary Barrett playing her Korg Pa1000arranger keyboard |
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| Warren Levick playing the Kohler and Campbell grand piano |
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| Yvonne Moller playing her Korg Pa3X arranger keyboard |
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| Patrick McMillan playing the Kohler and Campbell grand piano |
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| Resident and Club member Diane Lyons playing her Korg Pa700 arranger keyboard |
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| Resident Bennie Gunn playing the Kohler and Campbell grand piano |
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| Resident and Club member Len Hancy singing with backing tracks |
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Club Night 5th August 2025
What a great night of music! A good attendance and some terrific music spanning lots of genres and eras. The evening started with arrival music provided by Warren Levick on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano - a good half-hour warm-up session! Thank you, Warren. To start the formal proceedings, Ian Jackson played the Clavinova with some great individual arrangements of classical pop songs like Billy Joel's Piano Man. Great start to the evening, thanks Ian. Next up, Yvonne Moller played her Korg Pa3X arranger workstation with some great beats and the music was really syncopating! Well done, Yvonne. Finally, Patrick McMillan played the Clavinova again with some lovely melodies by the such as Burt Bacharach. Nice playing and superb arrangements, thanks Patrick.
After the Raffle and Refreshments break, our guest artists were Ben Fernandez on the piano, his son, Josh, on sax, clarinet, bass guitar, and cajon - but not all at the same time, and Bosco Fernandez who is Ben's brother now residing in Auckland who played some amazing duets with Ben. As always, a very polished and thoroughly enjoyable concert of popular songs from the last 50 years. Thank you, guys.
Josh on various instruments, and Ben's brother,
Bosco Fernandez on piano
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| Warren Levick provided the arrival music on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano |
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| Ian Jackson playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano |
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| Yvonne Moller playing her Korg Pa3X arranger workstation |
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| Patrick McMillan playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano |
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| Ben Fernandez playing our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano |
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| Ben Fernandez and brother, Bosco Fernandez, dueting on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano |
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| Ben Fernandez and brother, Bosco Fernandez, dueting on our Yamaha Clavinova CVP-809 ensemble piano and joined by Ben's son, Josh, on cajon |
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| Josh and Ben Fernandez mixing piano with sax |
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| L to R: Ben Fernandez, Josh Fernandez, and Bosco Fernandez |
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Coffee Day at Northbridge Village
As part of the Club's ethos of "Bringing Music to the Community", we had a lovely day at Northbridge Village in Northcote, North Shore, Auckland, NZ. Six of our members did turns of playing the Village's Yamaha Clavinova CVP-609 ensemble piano and indeed, one member brought along his arranger keyboard to add variety to the proceedings. The residents and our members seemed to really enjoy the music and certainly our Raffle was well patronised! We have been visiting this Village for at least 10 years and always a thoroughly enjoyable day - good music, good catering, good camaraderie.
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| Warren Levick playing the Yamaha CVP-609 ensemble piano |
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| Gordon Sutherland playing his Korg Pa5X arranger workstation |
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![Our June 2024 Guest Artist, 'Pablo' [Paul Brown]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoc5rGmT3pLORfp28x1NBmfsHYBuV8anSL0oeT43eE--eBg4Et3HfRX9iLmV9i5_ZEfrm_8GyPAuL0Hj8Ink8q0cKOuxkRX0DCDk-m7nO889Mw0cTSQMse473vqc6hj3foqtRjjXLCG5MBsCDPViWQfJ-I-s44DZolTRcipb-Bvo96MEQ7P-RSYYJV2Sg=s383)
