EDNA THOMAS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18364, 23 April 1925, Page 14

EDNA THOMAS.

TO-NIGHT'S CONCERT. "Artist is a-misleading word. It has been used to describe painters and poets of little degree, .jugglers and dancers and other euch, until it hag lost the meaning old Webster intended, for it,V writes Hector Bolitho, who is well known in New Zealand journalist "But now and" again it is attached on the stage and one'rcaßseS that it has- a refreshed meaning: ■" ' Marie Tempest is an artist. Lee White i 3 an artist.' Edna Thomas, tho -singer of plantation songs, is an artist. We in England knowthe first two facts to bo true. The third is to be proved in Australia when Edna, Thomas makes her first appearance. Edna Thomas, has brought a new note: into tho London theatres. She has lifted, the simple Creole songs up to the sacred peaks of art. Her songs, her voice, rich and true ag that of a nightingale, have pleased the Coliseum and Alhambra audiences in London, just as they pleased the highbrow West End audiences that sat in tho Bond street Aeolian Hall to hear her when she came, timid and unknown from America. Within two weeks she was a star. She was an artist and, despite tho trend of modern amusement, London still retained'its soul sufficiently to acclaim her. -She sings tender little plantation songs with a voice as sweet as that of Kirkby Lunn, and she sings them' with a grace and - tenderness that' touch-you-deeply in that little corner we vaguely describe as the heart."

Edna Thomas will give her second and final costume recital in the Choral Hall this evening, under the direction. of"'E; J. Carroll. '