Kelvin Cummings is an Entertainer (Musician/Actor) that plays a variety of hit original and cover songs that everyone knows and loves. Kelvin is enthusiastic and loves having fun on stage. While encouraging requests, and energetically including comical costumes on occasion to his performance, this doesn't compromise Kelvin's playing and dancing on stage all night long.
Kelvin is the front man of the professional covers band CHARMA. He is also the coordinator of the contemporary "ROCKIT" music teaching programme, teaching everything from drums, bass guitar, electric/acoustic guitar, keyboards, and vocals. Click on for more details.
Kelvin Cummings has been performing for a majority of his life. Ever since performing the classic "chariots of fire" at his grandparents house at an extremely young age, he has progressively picked up his skills from basic keyboard playing to advanced musicianship in a number of different commercial rock instruments (keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, singing, harmony + more). Being a boy scout in his youth meant that Kelvin was invited to perform in a number of variety shows called "Gang Shows". This experience gave Kelvin not only more experience at performing with other entertainers, but gave him a chance to gain confidence in singing, and learn how to entertain a crowd. All of this at the age of 11.	The Otago Area Gang Show logo
While learning professional performance based music, Kelvin Cummings was offered an opportunity to tour around the Otago/Southland provinces with established entertainers including New Zealand country music great Noel Parlane. Since then, Kelvin has had a number of different opportunities to perform with other top named stars including Suzanne Prentice and Jimmy Barnes. Now that Kelvin had had a number of different experiences performing on stage musically, he also expressed a keen interest to the theatre. He has performed in virtually every theatre space Dunedin has to offer, with a number of different touring theatre troops, theatre companies, and types of shows. Everything from 2 piece shows at the Globe Theatre, to scoring main roles in big name Regent Theatre stage productions with the Dunedin Operatic society.
A picture from the nation wide TV campaign	After high school at Logan Park High, Dunedin (renowned for its arts/music strengths) Kelvin Cummings became fully trained in all areas of television, theatre, and radio with the Southern Institute of Television, Theatre, and Radio (now known as the Dunedin campus of Aoraki Polytechnic). From this course, he was not only able to gain a number of different tools to help and advance his music and theatrical training, but get his a number of contacts in Dunedin (and out of Dunedin areas). From this Kelvin was able to work for Radioworks Otago Limited doing promotional work, perform as a main character in a nation wide television ad campaign for Otago Polytechnic, and co-write and perform a touring musical around primary schools on Otago.
This theatre tour motivated Kelvin to gain a Bachelor of Education in primary teaching at the Dunedin College of Education, after completing his training with the Southern Institute. Now he is currently in talks with the College (and other funding groups) to create a program to teach intermediate, and junior high school children the skills of commercial rock/popular music. He sees that children at this age have a love for music, and with his amount of experience in the arts/music, accompanied with his qualified teacher training, he can encourage children and keep the love of music alive for them.
Kelvin Cummings has performed in a number of other covers bands (Slyx, Plagiarism, C's get degrees, Arcadia, Ardemus). With CHARMA (see DIFFERENT ENTERTAINMENT OPPORTUNITIES page), he is able to play the music he loves. He can also perform to the extreme of his abilities in front of enthusiastic crowds, and work with other musicians with not only a large amount of skill and experience, but don't show an personal arrogance that can sometimes be witnessed at this level of playing.	The official CHARMA logo
In 2004, Kelvin has held some very influential roles in some big name local operatic shows. He performed in Encore, he was assigned the stand in role for Derek Metzger's and held predominantly lead roles within the show including an 80 person strong cast. The roles Kelvin held included Danny from Grease, Enjolras in Les Miserable, and Galileo (the lead role) within the new rocking musical "We Will Rock You". He also played the part of Willard in the Taieri Musical Society's NZ premiere production of Footloose. One of the reviews went as far to say that Kelvin performance stole the show. October (7th till 15th), you can see Kelvin Cummings perform in his latest lead role as "The Arbiter" in the Taieri Musical Society's portrayal of "CHESS - The Musical".	Two of the many stage shows ENCORE (Dunedin Operatic - 2004) and CHESS - The Musical (Taieri Musical Society - 2005)
Although Kelvin has done a number of these things before he was 25, he is not looking to slow down now. This enthusiastic party goer still has a number of years to experience new and exciting things, and as long as there is a passion for music, and entertaining in his heart, that's how it will always be.