Trumpet Practice In Kaiser's Dug-Out

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 20, 10 November 1939, Page 11

Trumpet Practice In Kaiser's Dug-Out

It was from Grace Adams East, the trumpeter whose performances in this country will be well remembered by listeners. Probably not until the Archangel Gabriel heralds the millennium will a trumpeter have such an interesting experience as Miss East recently had. In Belgium, she stayed at the hotel which was the German Military Headquarters during the Great War, and while there she practised every day in the dug-out used by the Kaiser! Grace Adams East had been for some time in Belgium and at French towns when she wrote, on August 19. She mentions the "crisis" and remarks: "... people are more calm about it here than they were in Australia last September. A strange situation here and it is interesting to see it at close range." A LETTER arrived from Paris a short time ago. In Belgium she was delighted by the horse-drawn carriages which are still in use, and the picture here shows her in one of them. She mentions also the number of tandem bicycles one sees there. Of the people she says: "All enjoy life with abandon and there is no bother about ‘keeping up with the Jones,’" Arriving in Paris in May with the idea of seeing. the sights and visiting the dress shops, Miss East found she had contracts up to October 15 waiting for her. She went to Cannes, Monte Carlo, Nice, and was to go to Vichy, "Casino des Fleurs" and

Biarritz. After that her plans were to return to Paris for a season at the A.B.C. Theatre in Boulevard des Italiens. It is possible that New Zealand will see her once more next February. But the war has come in the middle of all such plans as these, and so one can but emulate Mr. Asquith and " wait and see."