Singing Scholarship Could Be Yours

Media Release 13 July 2010

Singing Scholarship Could Be Yours

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it!” These words of advice are from Ulla in the musical “The Producers” and now you have an opportunity to do just that.

Recently returned from Australia, where he has performed and taught for more than a decade, Christchurch-born Jonathan Densem is offering a full scholarship as he begins teaching singing and piano at his new studio in the Christchurch Arts Centre.

While in Australia Jonathan appeared in many of musical theatre’s biggest shows including “Les Misérables” and “Miss Saigon” as well as hundreds of jazz, cabaret and rock shows, for a wide range of audiences, from appreciative aficionados’ in backstreet bars through to rocking crowds of 80,000.

Jonathan arrived back in Christchurch with his young family late last year, after experiencing the horrific bushfires near Melbourne in February 2009, which saw 173 people lose their lives. “The fires had got to within a kilometre of our house in Buxton; we watched them for two hours before we decided to leave. My wife Emma was heavily pregnant with Caspar and we already had Otto, who was three; we just had to get out,” says Jonathan.

Moments after they arrived in Shepparton, managing to outrun the raging fires, Emma went into labour and 10 hours later, Caspar was born. Although the family was safe and their house was still standing, the death of one of Jonathan’s piano students really brought the tragedy home.

"It was horrific. He was killed with his mother and his brother but his father was saved. The whole experience made us re-evaluate things and that’s when we decided to come home,” says Jonathan. Over the last 7 months, Jonathan has been looking for the ideal music space and now has a studio in the Physics Building in the Arts Centre as well as his home studio in Cust, North Canterbury.

“My late father, John Densem, was also a musician and had a strong relationship with the Court Theatre so it’s great to be back in the same neighbourhood again,” he says.

Because he Ioves so many styles of music, Jonathan has developed a technique that can cope with anything from performing eight shows a week to successfully recreating the “big” pop style of singers like Robbie Williams.

“Whether it’s Christina Aguilera, Michael Buble, the musical Wicked, Rent, or TV’s Glee, people underestimate the huge demands of the voice in modern music,” says Jonathan Jonathan says the first 20 students who enrol with him will be eligible for the scholarship and he will select the student he believes shows the most promise, based on their first lesson, which is free.

“You can be six or sixty, you are never too young or old to learn to sing,” he says.

Ends.

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