Next year, the Auckland Philharmonia will perform an incredible one-night-only performance of ‘Gene Kelly: A Life in Music’.

The show is a mesmerising trip down memory lane, with a combination of film clips, stories and live performance highlighting the legendary dancer, director and choreographer Gene Kelly – who celebrated and popularised dance within mainstream cinema.

Leading the orchestra, is musical conductor extraordinaire Neil Thomson, who has worked with orchestras across the world.

He's currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Director at Orquestra Filarmônica de Goiás (Philharmonic Orchestra of Goiás).

Thomson told Jack Tame he has a personal connection with this show, having done a many of the films live with symphony orchestra around 10-15 years ago.

“I was booked to do Singing in the Rain at the Albert Hall,” he said, explaining that it was the first time the film had been done in that format.

“About a month before the show, I got this email and the title was ‘From Mrs Gene Kelly’,” he revealed.

“And I had this very friendly note just saying she was going to be introducing the show, and it would be nice to meet me, and everything.”

Thomson says that he and Patricia got on rather well, and began to work together more often, leading to this very show highlighting the extent of Gene Kelly’s musical talent.

“The films have been absolutely scrubbed up,” he told Tame.

“You’ve never seen prints like it. I mean, it’s fantastic, they’re so clean. The sound is so clean.”

Tickets for all shows at the Auckland Arts Festival are available at www.aaf.co.nz/

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Kevin Milne has an old sign hanging up in his garage.

He picked it up from a garage sale as a curiosity, but it came from an Auckland Pub in the 1980’s.

The sign states that any known gang member or person wearing gang patches or emblems will not be permitted in the hotel.

Kevin’s always found it a bit funny, and he’s wondering why people would feel safer not knowing if there’s a gang member next to them.

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Released on November 15th, Shawn is the fifth studio album from Shawn Mendes, and it features him at his most intimate and honest.

The album details everything that’s happened in the two years since his abrupt cancellation of his Wonder world tour, and the public spectacle the unravelling of his relationship with Camila Cabello became.

Estelle Clifford joined Jack Tame to give her thoughts on the release.

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From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough.

In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother's wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is composed of both Lisa Marie's and Riley's voice, a mother and daughter communicating across the transom of death as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other-the last words of the only child of a true legend.

In Too Deep by Lee Child and Andrew Child

Reacher had no idea where he was. No idea how he had got there. But someone must have brought him. And shackled him. And whoever had done those things was going to rue the day. That was for damn sure.

Jack Reacher wakes up, alone, in the dark, handcuffed to a makeshift bed. His right arm has suffered some major damage. His few possessions are gone. He has no memory of getting there.

The last thing Reacher can recall is the car he hitched a ride in getting run off the road. The driver was killed.

His captors assume Reacher was the driver's accomplice and patch up his wounds as they plan to make him talk.

A plan that will backfire spectacularly . . .

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Mike Yardley admits he’s a child at heart, and believes that nothing can reawaken your inner child like the escapist innocence, magic, and sparkle of Disney.

On his visit to LA recently, he decided to stop by the Disneyland Resort and swing through the parks.

He joined Jack Tame to discuss the dos and don’ts for those eyeing up a Disney holiday.

Read Mike’s full article here.

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Christmas is coming, bringing with it an overabundance of waste.

If you’re interested in making your Christmas celebrations a little more sustainable, Kate Hall has a few tips and tricks, including a list of over a hundred sustainable present ideas.

She joined Jack Tame for a chat about gifts they’ve given and received in the past, as well as explained the “no gift” Christmases her family has done – focusing instead on quality time or acts of service.

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On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for Saturday 23 November 2024, conductor extraordinaire Neil Thomson joins Jack to discuss the world of orchestra, the legacy of dancer and director Gene Kelly and a spectacular one-night-only performance with the Auckland Philharmonia.

Jack shares some very exciting news!

Wicked has landed in cinemas after gaining major pop culture momentum this year - does it deliver?

Plus, chef Nici Wickes shares a recipe dear to her heart.

Get the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast every Saturday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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A moth or so ago I was walking around the Halswell Quarry, looking for native bees. We have about 28 species of these bees in New Zealand, and the unfortunate thing is that we know very little about these creatures.

A new book by Rachel Weston described how these tiny bees make holes in the ground where their larvae (babies) are raised. The air space around those tunnels is quite busy, with bees coming and going constantly; some air traffic control could well be a useful asset to these tiny habitats!

I didn’t just find a heap of native bees but also a few holes of significant size: conically shaped holes with a diameter of at least 30 millimetres, situated in a dry bit of soil, protected from regular rain fall.

It reminded me of the holes I used to have under the eaves of our old open car port.

In the pit of these holes live a very clever Neuropteran insects, known as Antlions. The cool thing is that this extraordinary species is the only “antlion” endemic to New Zealand – it’s ours and it lives nowhere else in the world.

The fully-grown adult is a sizeable lacewing with beautiful wings, shaped by a multitude of fine veins. It’s not a strong flyer, but elegant when it climbs up the vegetation around the area where it grew up. This insect feeds on pollen and small insects, but it is not very long-lived.

The larvae (young versions) of these antlions are the ones that create those magnificent holes in the soil through clever movement of their bodies. Excavation is a fine art.

They are predators, meat eaters, and the holes are their traps. These predators are equipped with a mean set of jaws.

When an insect ventures into the realm of these antlion babies, they will tumble down the steepish slope, down to the bottom in the centre. That’s where the antlion larva is waiting to grab its prey with impressive, sharp mouthparts that look like pincers.

Their diet is any invertebrate that is small enough to be subdued: crawling caterpillars, small beetles, native bees, ants that made navigation errors, etc.

The coolest part of the antlion’s arsenal is the tactic of making the potential prey lose their footing!

As soon as an ant tumbles down the slope and dislodges some sand or bits of soil, the antlion baby starts tossing some soil, throwing sand uphill in the direction of the prey to make it lose its balance!

And of course I can’t help fuelling the fight by dropping some soil particles into the antlion’s clever trap – now this is a fight to watch!

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