One man everything

By Gena Tuffery, January 23, 2008 @ 12:24 pm

Russel Walder is a Grammy nominee and multi-platinum album artist, but you won’t see him kicking it with Kanye. He plays something that’s rarer in the music industry than chess: the oboe

But that doesn’t mean Walder’s a stranger to the mainstream—not to anyone who reads film and documentary credits, anyway. Recent roll-bys include The Reluctant Revolutionary, a documen­tary about David Lange, and The Lunatics Ball, in which Walder contributed to both the soundtrack and the acting.

The dual movie role was not out of character—this oboist is into DIY everything. He composed, recorded, produced and engineered his recent CD, Rise, in his custom-built Auckland studio, before putting it out under his own record label, Nomad Soul Records. And the lack of outside influence clearly didn’t hurt; Rise hit number one on National Public Radio’s charts in the US in September.

“I was up early and saw the listing on my computer,” says Walder. “My partner and I jumped around the room over our morning porridge.”

The CD has distribution deals in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Spain and the US—and Walder spreads himself around too. As he performs extensively in Europe and North America—sometimes in Carnegie Hall—and on TV shows and in major festivals around the world, friends and family are often forced to play Where’s Walder?

For now he’s here, composing the soundtrack for a new TVNZ documentary on Sir Edmund Hillary. “I keep imagining what the sound of getting to the top of Everest is,” says Walder. “Maybe it’s silent.” We’re sure he’ll figure it out. With his background even a project on Everest shouldn’t be too big a hill to climb.