It started out small, but now Synthony is drawing crowds of thousands, touring overseas, starting its own festival and potentially heading to Vegas. How?

Ella Monnery has been singing ever since she can remember. Across her career, the Wellington vocalist has done it all, working on cruise ships, booking well-paid corporate gigs, collaborating with local artists, competing on The Voice Australia and performing at Christmas in the Park in front of tens of thousands of people. 

But none of that compares to playing with Synthony, a homegrown music event that combines orchestras with cover versions of “nostalgic bangers” from the 90s and 2000s. She remembers her first show in 2018 well. “The Town Hall was absolutely packed … genuinely packed to to the rafters,” she says.

“You could smell the sweat and body odour. There was just something special about it.”

Now, five years on, Monnery is a permanent part of Synthony, singing hits like Florence + the Machine’s ‘You’ve Got the Love’ and The Shapeshifters’ ‘Lola’s Theme’ backed by a full orchestra in front of thousands of fans at home and overseas. When The Spinoff speaks to her, she’s just returned from touring Australia and Singapore with the event, and she’s about to board a flight to perform at Christchurch festival Electric Avenue.

Monnery admits she battles nerves playing to the kind of crowds Synthony now commands. “We pull off this huge bloody thing. It’s a little bit nerve-wracking, thinking, ‘I can’t fuck this up,’” she says. “I’ve got 60 people behind me trying to play at the same time. I can’t fuck up the words or muck up the arrangement of the song.”

But she drops everything to take part in them. “It’s so amazing and so unique. I’ll try and do it until they kick me off.”

Jeremy Redmore feels the same way. The former frontman for New Zealand rock band Midnight Youth was first asked to take part in Synthony in 2020 at an event cancelled by Covid. When it was finally rescheduled, he walked out to a frothing full house at Wellington’s TSB Arena.

“I had never performed with an orchestra before,” he says. “I didn’t realise how damn popular it was.”

He found himself conducting mass singalongs, belting out hits like Avicii’s ‘Wake Me Up’ and The Killers’ ‘Mr Brightside’ to crowds so fired up he could barely hear himself sing. “I come on and I barely have to do anything,” says Redmore. “The crowd knows every single word … It’s the greatest singalong you can do.”

When his role in the show is over, Redmore heads out front to experience Synthony for himself. “You’ve got this great light show. It sounds amazing. It looks amazing.” He’s about to move to the Netherlands, but says he loves performing at the event so much he’s considering travelling back to take part whenever it’s on, and joining other performances around the globe.

“I’m all in.”

If David Higgins sounds like a promoter, that’s because he is – a big one. ”We’ve promoted the NRL Auckland Nines, which … filled Eden Park for two days,” he says. “We’ve had a boxing heavyweight world title [fight]. We’ve had public speaking events with Richard Branson … I think that was about 80,000 people over two days.”

He talks big numbers, bamboozles with big stats and bold claims. Higgins operates promotions company Duco Events out of a brand new Parnell office. When The Spinoff arrives, renovations make it too noisy to talk, so we head to a nearby cafe. He recounts pay-per-view boxing events and earnings off the top of his head. “We did $40-to-$50 million,” he says of Joseph Parker’s title fight in 2018. “It broke a few records.”

Boxing is his main game, but Higgins quickly turns into a big softy when he talks about Synthony, his newest event that’s quickly taking up most of his time. “You should see the feedback we get,” he says. “These people [say], ‘Can I live in your events for the rest of my life? … It’s a spiritual experience.’ It’s typical of our audience.”

Up until then, Higgins had refused to promote any kind of event involving music. He’d thought about it, inquiring about bringing his favourite rocker Bruce Springsteen to New Zealand, but deemed it too risky. “You’ve got mega giants like Live Nation who own hundreds if not thousands of venues who do deals with acts and roll them out globally,” he says. “I couldn’t see an angle.”

Then he got a phone call that changed his mind. It was from David Elmsly, who, along with co-founder Erika Amoore, had started a show called Synthony. They’d seen a YouTube clip of a similar event combining orchestras and cover songs and decided to bring the concept here, playing first at the Auckland Town Hall.

It had gone well, and they thought it could grow, but needed some help. Elmsly told Higgins: “You wouldn’t be interested. It’d be too small. But we’re keen to take it to the next level.”

Higgins invited him in for a chat, and started seeing potential. “I asked a lot of questions. I thought, ‘Wow, we could trademark Synthony in every first-world jurisdiction,'” he says. He made comparisons to Cirque du Soleil, “a sophisticated global brand [with] a suite of shows they run around the world and a residency in Vegas.”

Synthony, he thought, was similarly “scalable”.

So Higgins made the pair an offer, bought Synthony outright (Elmsly and Amoore remain as consultants), and began making it bigger. First, it moved from the Town Hall to Spark Arena. Then it began touring it around the country, to Wellington and New Plymouth’s Bowl of Brooklands. Every event was numbered, and set lists changed, to make them feel unique. Its popularity just kept growing.

Now, Synthony is bigger than ever. It’s just toured four festival dates across Australia, and debuted in Singapore. On April 1, more than 20,000 people will head to Auckland Domain for its latest iteration, a full-day music festival featuring performances by Dave Dobbyn, Kimbra and Shapeshifter, and the debut of Synthony No. 4 with an all-new setlist.

A Vegas residency delayed by Covid is back on the cards, too. “If it wasn’t for Covid, it would be running like David Copperfield every day in Vegas,” says Higgins. He’s also getting calls from others wanting to host Synthony events around the world, a private party for “high net worth individuals” in India, and a medieval castle near the Danube River.

But Higgins has even bigger dreams for it. “Synthony would work anywhere … Vancouver, Honolulu, Spain, Portugal, France, England, India, China,” he says. “Big bangers like the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim transcend languages. People associate [those songs] with happy, good times.

Now, like Monnery and Redmore, he’s all in too, with plans to take Synthony to as many people as it can reach. “I thought boxing was quite exciting and risky and interesting, but this – this is interesting.”

Dick Johnson agrees that Synthony’s success is down to the music. He would say that – he’s the mastermind in charge of choosing the set lists. Across the 90-minute show, he can fit about 25 songs in, and he takes great care picking exactly which songs work the best with an orchestra.

They need to tug at the nostalgia strings just the right amount. “There’s no denial … that it’s great [music], and it just really lends itself to an orchestra.”

When Daft Punk quit touring, he added an homage to the French electronic outfit. He’s reimagined Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’, a cult one-hit wonder that’s “not a cool track, but when it’s played the way it is you can’t deny that it works.” Songs from Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Disclosure and Flume feature heavily.

“Sonically, it’s huge, you put these beautiful string and brass sections over the top, featured singers, the lighting, amazing visuals. Even if you weren’t a massive fan of that music … you can’t [deny it]. People just love it.” Surely there’s a time limit on nostalgia. Will Johnson ever run out of songs to put on a Synthony stage? “No,” he says. “My hardest job is fitting them all in. I start with a huge list.”

Occasionally, he goes back in time as far as Beethoven or Mozart, adding “huge electronic drums” over the top. Doesn’t that anger the purists? “They might [be angry] but that’s OK,” says Johnson. “I bet they’ll be dancing.”

Synthony in the Domain is held in Auckland Domain from 2-10pm on April 1.