Wayne Lawrence Senior was born in Auckland on 13 January 1940 to Camilla and Joe Senior. He had two older siblings, Wendy and Lynly. After attending Oranga Primary in One Tree Hill he moved to Mangakino Area School when his father became chief welding inspector on the Maraetai Dam.
Senior loved building and flying model airplanes and was a very good artist. Many of his early paintings were of fighter planes in battle and scenes from musicals. While at Auckland Grammar School in the mid-50s he taught himself the cornet, and played in the school orchestra. He was later mentored by his uncle Bunny, who ran a dance band and had a great record collection, and introduced him to the trumpet.
On his website Orchestra Arranging and Composition, Senior recalls: “By the age of 14 I had memorised all the solos from dad’s collection of swing records and could sing or whistle them while listening to the recording; likewise the themes of the classics. At age 16 I purchased my first trumpet and commenced to teach myself to read music.
“At age 17 I was leading the Savoy Five and writing the arrangements. I had developed a deep interest in vocal groups and sang with friends in a quartet that performed repertoire by the Four Aces and the Four Lads. The Hi-Los [from the US] were to become a major influence on my musical direction and I learnt much of my musical theory education from transcribing their intricate chords; add to that the arrangements of jazz vocal group The Four Freshmen whom I discovered soon after.”
After graduating from Auckland Grammar, Senior took a job in an advertising agency making art and writing jingles. It was a great grounding for his later work in musical arranging and television production.
at 57A symonds St, Every room was occupied by a constantly changing stream of musicians
Late in the 1950s he wrote his first arrangements for the group that would later become the Auckland Neophonic Orchestra. The 57A Rehearsal Band was named after the house in Symonds Street where the band regularly practised. Every room was occupied by a constantly changing stream of musicians including Neil Dunningham, Val Leemon, Merv Thomas, Tony Baker, Bernie Allen and Bennie Gunn. Many of these also worked in the 1ZB Radio Orchestra, for which Senior also occasionally did arrangements and musical direction.
In 1961 Senior was musical director on the Everly Brothers’ New Zealand tour which included the Howard Morrison Quartet. He also wrote the Quartet’s arrangements and went on to have a life-long association as one of Morrison’s musical directors, including arranging his signature tune ‘Whakaaria Mai’ (‘How Great Thou Art’).
Senior married Patricia Sutherland in the early 1960s and they settled in Forrest Hill. Over the years an endless stream of New Zealand vocalists visited their home, including Craig Scott, Ray Woolf, Ray Columbus, Tina Cross, Erana Clark, Rob Guest and Howard Morrison. Senior’s son Grant recalls the house having both a piano and organ, on which his father wrote his arrangements, although a lot of his work was done in his head.
In 1968 Senior was MD on Allison Durbin’s ‘I Have Loved Me a Man’ which Chris Bourke describes on AudioCulture as having, “An orchestral climax of strings, horns and backing singers beneath a warbling, tear-stained vocal.”
It was originally recorded at Mascot Studios in Auckland with Senior scoring the charts, hiring the musicians, and conducting and producing the session. Bruce King played drums with Mike Walker (piano), Gray Bartlett (guitar), Merv Thomas (trombone) and the strings of the Auckland Symphonia. The song was No.1 for two weeks in the New Zealand charts, where it spent 11 weeks; it went on to win the Loxene Golden Disc award and became New Zealand’s biggest-selling single at that time.
An early foray into television music came in 1971 when Senior wrote the introductory theme to the series Pukemanu. At the time he was assistant music director on TV’s Happen Inn. “The main theme had to have the rhythmical qualities of the timber industry in Pukemanu,” he explained to the NZ Herald. “I lived for four-and-a-half years in Mangakino so I know the sort of life the music had to fit. It had to have the excitement of, say, ‘Mogul’ [from TV business drama The Troublemakers], but played down because it was New Zealand.”
Senior worked for TVNZ as a musical director alongside Bernie Allen and Tony Baker
From 1970–1983 Senior worked for TVNZ as a musical director alongside Bernie Allen and Tony Baker, primarily on light entertainment music programmes such as Howard Morrison Live (1982), 12 Bar Rhythm ’n Shoes (1980-81), the 1981 Royal Variety Performance, Opportunity Knocks (1975-78), and Sing (1974-75).
He said, “I was jointly responsible for the arranging, conducting and sound-mixing supervision of up to 44 weeks of programming per year.” Towards the end of this tenure the NZ Symphony Orchestra recorded his Dialogue for Trumpet and Orchestra.
Fellow arranger and composer Bernie Allen recalls that in the early days of television and recording in New Zealand there were five go-to arrangers and musical directors; Jimmy Sloggett, Bob Gillett, Tony Baker, himself, and Wayne. He saw Wayne as very creative, a strong vocal arranger and musical director for jazz and vocal groups, and barbershop quartets, and a perfectionist who could sometimes be making changes right up to the last moment.
As if he didn’t have enough to do, Wayne joined the experimental Bruce Morley Little Band in 1978 playing trumpet, composing and arranging. The group specialised in performing an eclectic range of work including traditional and Latin jazz, Kurt Weill, Jacques Loussier Trio baroque-jazz pieces, and original works. Senior also wrote jingles for television, including ‘Lifesavers’, ‘Second Holiday Feeling’ (NAC), ‘Bell Tea Bags’, ‘Shore City’, and Larry’s Rebels singing ‘Let’s Swing the Jingle (for Coca-Cola)’.
In 1978 Senior and Patricia parted ways and he moved to Australia in 1983 where he found work as an arranger for television Channel 9 and Channel 10 in Sydney. In 1985 he transferred to Perth and joined the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University as a lecturer in Jazz and Contemporary Arranging and Composition. Senior did arrangement work and jazz vocals for the West Australian Youth Orchestra, Channel 7, Perth Big Band, West Australia Symphony Orchestra, and his own WA Jazz Choir.
Bobby Shew recorded and performed a number of Senior’s big band jazz compositions
In 1992 he was commissioned to compose and arrange a complex piece called ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply, Blue’ to be performed by US trumpeter Bobby Shew and saxophonist Jeff Clayton at the inaugural Jazz Australia Convention held in Perth. Shew also recorded and performed a number of Senior’s big band jazz compositions and arrangements, now published in the US by Really Good Music. Senior made several visits to the US to give guest lectures in jazz at the University of Wisconsin.
He returned to New Zealand in 1995 to lecture at the Christchurch Polytechnic Jazz Studies course during which time he arranged and conducted concerts for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, producing 41 concerts for them. He formed and directed the Christchurch Jazz Arts Orchestra and Voiceworks Jazz Choir.
After freelancing for two years he transferred to the University of Auckland in 1999 where his proposal to mount a bachelor’s degree in Jazz Studies resulted in his appointment as coordinator and senior lecturer of the programme from 2000 to 2001.
In Feb 2003 Senior took a lectureship at the School of Media Arts, Commercial Music at the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec), travelling down to Hamilton by bus each week to lecture for three days. He called it his “office” as he was able to spend his time on board writing, composing and planning without being interrupted. From 2004 he lectured full time. For the end-of-year concerts at Wintec, Wayne assembled a 25-piece ensemble of professional musicians to perform graduating student’s arrangements.
Some of the projects that he supported included arranging and recording music for albums and concerts by pianist Kevin Field, trumpet player Mike Booth, saxophonist/vocalist Nathan Haines (‘Lament’), and orchestrating the “gothic” musical Tales of Nikolai Gogol.
Senior arranged music for Kevin Field, Mike Booth, and Nathan Haines
Essentially self-educated up to this point, while at Wintec he studied and obtained his Master of Arts (Music) with distinction in March 2006. At the same time he was an itinerant teacher at Auckland’s Kristin School and Saint Kentigern College, coaching jazz piano, barbershop quartets, vocal studies and working as a musical director.
On 28 November 2009 the 85-voice Wellington Orpheus Choir performed a number of his arrangements at the Wellington Town Hall in a show called Anything Goes: the songs of Cole Porter. Wayne was also MD on the night.
He met his future wife Trudy Skinner in 2015 and they holidayed in London, Paris and New York, enjoying the sights and music. He coached choirs at retirement villages and she introduced him to ballet classes. Together they sang in the Auckland Choral Society, Castorways and Harbour Voices. He retired in 2022 at the age of 82 but continued to follow his interests, which included setting up a website to teach orchestral arranging online.
Senior had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and a great sense of humour when it came to naming his works; pieces such as ‘Cow Cocky in Queen Street’, performed by the Oswald Cheesman Orchestra in 1963, and ‘Surfing Ballet for Orchestra’.
At Senior’s funeral service in January 2025, trumpeter, composer and tutor Mike Booth said, “The fire burned deeply in him. He was an innovator and pioneer who forged a career where his arrangement skills and knowledge were particularly admired by all on both sides of the Tasman. He excelled in teaching, in choral music, big band arranging, and orchestral conducting.” Grant Senior recalled his father as having, “An incredible memory for melodies and lyrics.” Search the labels of many New Zealand hit records and you will often find Senior’s name there as musical director.
