"DISCOVERING" MUSIC AT 2ZB

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 137, 6 February 1942, Page 15

"DISCOVERING" MUSIC AT 2ZB

New Sunday Session ILL BEAVIS, of the 2ZB announcing staff, is compére of the 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon session Let’s Discover Music. His aim is to help listeners to appreciate all types of music without using any technical phrases or giving high-brow explanations. He takes various compositions and attempts to " discover" just what the composer had in mind when he wrote that particular composition. Melodies and subtle touches which ‘are not always apparent become obvious after a little easy explanation. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Mr. Beavis played Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade Suite and pointed out to listeners how the composer had in mind the story of the Arabian Nights when he wrote it, and how the music really represents Scheherazade telling her stories to the Sultan. Bill Beavis was born in the west of England and has followed numerous careers. At one time he ran a commercial poultry farm. Starting off with no experience, twenty acres of land, six hens, and a cock, he made plenty of mistakes but eventually ended up with a 3,000 bird plant. This experiment lasted for five years and brought Mr. Beavis plenty of excitement, especially as the farm was situated in the heart of a foxhunting county. The poultry-farmer had no love for the fox-hunters. Soon after this he decided that if he was really going to be a farmer, he might as well go to New Zealand, so here he came. He had four different jobs in six weeks and eventually spent four years in a motor-assembling works. Then he saw a chance in radio and took it. He has always been interested in the theatre, and wrote his first play, which he also produced and acted in, when he was sixteen. During his farming years he acted with the Cotswold Players and on coming to New Zealand his talents found an outlet through the Wellington Repertory Society, the Miramar Film Studios, and the NBS and CBS productions. He has written several radio and film scripts, and one, which was submitted to the BBC for criticism, earned special praise as an experimental work. Bill" Beavis compéred the "Gramofan" session at 2YA, a weekly half-hour of new recordings, which ran for almost a year, and he is sure that he is going to enjoy his work on Let’s Discover Music, from 2ZB, just as much, if not more. (A photograph of Bill Beavis appears on page 20.)