Musician Comes Home

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 34

Musician Comes Home

A POSSIBLE explanation why so many New Zealand radio listeners persist in thinking that John, Charles Thomas is a coloured singer was given the other day by a former Wellington musician who called at The Listener office. "I have played privately for Thomas and he is very definitely a white man," he said. "But the confusion might have arisen through two other artists of

the same surname who are on record-ings-Edna Thomas, who is a_ white woman, but a singer of Negro spirituals, and another Edna Thomas, a coloured performer." The Listener's visitor’ was Horace Hunt, pianist, and once president of the Wellington Society of Professional Musicians. For the last 21 years he has been in the United States. The contrast between British and American humour is so commonly remarked that it was surprising to hear from Mr. Hunt that the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, with their typically English flavour, were enormously popular in the United States. "The operas are presented frequently in schools," he said, "and are always a big attraction. And when the professionals, including the D’Oyley Carte company, visit us, they present the entire repertoire in a season to large audiences." Of his 21 years away Mr. Hunt has spent six in New York, where he became interested in vocal music and made short tours with singers in New York State and Canada. In 1931 he went to Berkshire County, in Massachusetts, to take an appointment as organist and choirmastér of the Congregational church there, and as head of the vocal department at the Barrington school (and more recently of the piano department). Then he became director of the Berkshire Musical Association which was often engaged to sing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under ‘Serge Koussevitzky. , Berkshire County, he told us, was very much alive artistically. On almost ‘every hill-top was a school of music, or drama, or dance. And a summer reper.tory theatre presented a different play every week in the season, with training courses for students. On the musical side the movement was akin to the summer schools held in New Zealand, but on a much larger scale. Altogether, said Mr. Hunt, the practise of the arts was now thriving throughout America, and particularly in New Zealand.