Graeme Perkins is best-known in Wanaka these days as a musician who contributes to local productions like ‘Stars in Their Eyes’ and as the chair of the Luggate Community Association, but without knowing it, many of us have been listening to his music for years.  

An award-winning composer, his creations have played in the background of a range of television and film projects, including wildlife documentaries screened here and abroad, and some of our most-loved children’s programmes.

Originally from Invercargill, Graeme moved to Dunedin to pursue a history degree, which included a mini-thesis on Asian immigration. He chose history, he said, because it seemed there was no future in pursuing music as a career. He was wrong.

Immediately after finishing his degree, he went into playing in rock bands ("it was mostly loud raunchy pub music”) and teaching piano and guitar privately. He took it further in 1976, when he moved to America to learn more.

"I needed to know about music, and at that time they didn’t have the wonderful contemporary music courses they have now. You could only study classical, and I was more interested in arranging and orchestration,” he said.

Graeme moved to Los Angeles, where he studied under arrangers and orchestrators who worked in the film industry, and then went on to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, a school whose alumni include Quincy Jones, Diana Krall and John Mayer.

"Then I ran out of money,” he laughed. Graeme came back to New Zealand, settling first in Wellington where he worked as a programme producer for National Radio, then moving back to Dunedin with wife Yvonne, where they started their family.

It was there, in the mid-eighties, that Graeme broke into television, the medium through which many New Zealanders will have become familiar with his work, though they may not realise it. He was involved in musical direction and songwriting for ‘Playschool’ for the show’s final two years, and then went on to work on ‘You and Me’ with Suzy Cato.

In about 1990, he did his first wildlife documentary, a job that led to a 25-year career doing "one documentary after another”. He worked as a contractor for Natural History New Zealand to work on co-productions with companies like National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery, as well as organisations in Europe and Asia. He was involved in the Emmy-award winning ‘Most Extreme’ series, as well as ‘Deer Wars’, and won Best Original Music (television) for ‘Dragons of Komodo’ in 1997. He followed this up in 2002 by taking out Best Soundtrack at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Albert, France, for ‘The Devil’s Playground’.

Despite the subject matter of the films, his life wasn’t spent flying around the world exploring its magnificent landscapes. Most of Graeme’s work was done in his home studio in Dunedin; he said he only had one trip into the field, on the show ‘A Wild Moose Chase’, which documented the search for live moose in Fiordland.

"They set up motion cameras in Fiordland, and every so often the chopper went in to change the batteries, so I got to go in to do a battery change!” he said. 

Graeme left the wildlife behind four years ago, when he and Yvonne moved to Luggate, a place they had been visiting for holidays since they bought a crib in the village in 1997. He said knowing the area well made it an "easy transition”.

He has enjoyed his work with the Luggate Community Association, which he joined right away right away after the move, becoming chair a year ago. "We’ve got a great wee can-do committee that’s a pleasure to work with,” he said, adding he’s learned about political and infrastructure issues he didn’t know existed.

Since making the move to Central, he’s also taken to the stage again, for ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ in Wanaka, Queenstown's ‘Saturday Night Fever’, and performing in ‘Grease’ back in Dunedin, something he relishes. "I get to play the piano again, which is great,” he said, and while it’s a long way from the raunchy pub music of the seventies, it’s a kind of full circle for a life spent in music.

PHOTO: Wanaka App