Taupo's Swing Music Group Met By A Chance Encounter

Taupo Times, Volume VI, Issue 290, 29 August 1957, Page 4

Taupo's Swing Music Group Met By A Chance Encounter

AMONG tbe many organisations which have sprung up in this rapidly-growing town is a small group of swing music enthusiasts who have gathered together to play and to enconrage the cult of modern jazz. As with many other groups, they met by cliance a few months ago at a social gathering at the home of a mutual friend; they had not known each other previously.

Whether you like swing, or not, the plain fact is that its followers take it very seriously. Like its counterparts all over the world the Taupo Swing Group goes to endless pains to add polish to intricate passages, and its members seem to derive considerable pleasure in the process. There are four in the group, which holds weekly sessions. Each member takes his turn to provide hospitality. Each session is a social occasion in which the wives also participate, and at times, criticise. MODERN IDIOMS Each session is tape-recorded. At a suitable time during the evening eacli number is played back, and the iisteners cock a critical ear at the orchestration, otfer suggestions for improvement, and sometimes put new twists into the phrasing. They keep toiich with overseas trends by listening to tape-recordings of Continental groups with similar musical urges. The four Taupo rnen play these European recordings time and again, and in that way learn the modern idioms. As you may see, it is a pretty serious business, though to them it is a pleasurable pastime. .. " - Leader, clarinet and tenor saxophone is Dick Harford, who began his musical career as a members of a London hospital students' dance band in 1925, and later became a professional miisician. I-Ie bas organised and led dance bands in Eurox)e, Egypt, India and iSouth America. He is an Englishman who has been in this country for two years. Solo guitar is Jerry Ktiipers, who has been playing since 1945. After some experience witli his school dance band, he joined a modern-style jazz group at Ilaarlem, After oue or two radio broadcasts and other engagements with

them, he left Holland for New Zealand in 1956. The third member is guitarist Jolm Bergers, who has been a keen jazz enthusiast all his life. He took up the guitar when he came to the Dominion four years ago. | Robin O'Neile, the trumpeter, played with his school military band in England, and later with an amateur New Orleans-style jazz band for three years ti 11 he came to New Zealand in 1956. He gets a lot of pleasure out of singj ing calypsos. This group uses neither piano oor drums, but with the application of clectronic amplification, its members are able to perform successfully under almost any eonditious. Both guitars are coimeeted to a powerful amplifler, and a sepgrate microphone is used for the trumpet and clarinet. "PROGRESS-IVE" STYLE According to Dick Harford, their object is to develop a small, polished unit playing "the more refined type of swing music,-' and to introduce the new "progressive" style of modern jazz which is popular in the United States and Europe. As he has it, "this is particulariy suitable for a small combination whose playing, it is hoped, will stiinulate interest in 'music in the modern manner,' as weU as catering for tlie tastes of those who prefer the more rohust cadences of the 1930's." He thinks it may perhaps lead to the formation of the type of jazz club so well known overseas. Sucli cluhs enconrage tlieir members to appreeiate and enjoy good jazz by means of record sessions, lectureS, and discussions illustrated hy the music of a swing group. "Oue might even envisage in the distant futiire a festival of jazz at Taupo," he says.