£4,500 A WEEK FOR CINEMA MUSIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 430, 11 August 1928, Page 25

£4,500 A WEEK FOR CINEMA MUSIC

SYDNEY’S HUGE BILL NEW INSTRUMENT PURCHASED IT is estimated that the weekly music bill footed by cinema managers in Sydney amounts to approximately £4,500. And to the immense variety of instruments already in use is to be added an impressive one—the Vibraphone. As an illustration of what Mr. Stuart Doyle thinks of music as an attraction there will be over sixty musicians at the Capitol Theatre when the Commonwealth Band will appear in conjunction with the pit orchestra, stage band and Wurlitzer organ (writes a Sydney correspondent). Music plays a tremendous part in the success of the modern cinema, and contrasts oddly with the days when films were viewed behind a tin hoarding with ,at the most, an out-of-tune piano as accompaniment. The evolution of music in Australian picture theatres has been remarkable. It seems only a few years ago that an orchestra of seven was con-

sidered something extraordinary in a picture theatre. At the Capitol Theatre there is a unit orchestra of 30, a stage band of 20, and a Wurlitzer organ, which alone embodies 173 different instrumental effects. New Instrument i Yet another instrument Is to be 1 added to the Capitol band. ! The Vibraphone, for the first time in Australia, will be shortly heard. ; It is electrically operated and some | astonishing and crescendo and dimiui endo effects can be secured on it. The Vibraphone has been featured with great success by Paul Whiteman’s hand in America. Whiteman’s band has received as much as £5,000 for a single broadcast, and his name Is the best boxoffice attraction in America. The array of instrumentation at the Capitol will be imposing, and the rendition of the famous “1812” overture ; by combined Commonwealth Band and Capitol orchestra should be inspiring.