Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 763, 5 March 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

' HE first of 4YA’s Country Calendar sessions for this year will be broadcast at 7.20 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10, and here is a photograph of the new compere, Garth Sim. Aptly enough, Garth Sim is a teacher at Mosgiel District High School, which has a pronounced agricultural bias. The

school has had the support of Federated Farmers in a campaign to make it into a full scale agricultural college for the benefit of young people going on the land in Otago and Southland. Mr. Sim’s background is concerned -with farms and farming, and he has also done some stock and station agency work. Since taking up teaching he has been mainly in country schools, including a sole charge one in Otago, and he has been a senior secondary assistant at the Tokomairiro District High School, "Milton. He has been at Mosgiel since the beginning ef last year, and has contributed to NZBS programmes a series of talks called Country Township (sketches of life in an imaginary country community). He has also taken part in a number of discussions which have been broadcast by all the YA stations. Garth is a family man-father of four -and, like thousands of other New Zealanders, uses his spare time for gar#ening and working around the house. os

TWO PIANISTS

NEIL CAMPBELL (Oamaru) writes: "Could you give me some information about the American® light pianist Andre Previn in your excellent column? Your notes in the centre pages are always eagerly awaited in our household." Andre Previn, who is only 25 years old, went from Beverly Hills High

School in 1946 to work in the music department of _M.G.M.

studios, scoring and arranging the music which Jose Iturbi played in Holiday in Mexico. In rapid succession he did the scoring and played piano solos for seven films; then there were eight films in which he conducted the music, and more films for which he wrote the scores. Previn is a young man whose love afid talent for music are coupled with perseverance and industry that have earned him his present post of musical director at M.G.M,. Previn was born in Berlin. Music is in his family; his father, Jack Previn, is a piano teacher; his cousin Charles has been

conductor at the Radio City Music Hall. Andre appeared as guest soloist at the President’s birthday ball at White House. His audience then included President Truman and the whole Cabinet. As wel] as sophisticated show and movie tunes he plays and composes classical music. My correspondent also asks for "a few lines on the British pianist George Shearing." Shearing enjoys the distinction of having had two careers. After reaching fame in England he started all over again in the U.S., and once more he is in the front- rank as a popular pianist. It was at a meeting of London’s "No. 1 Rhythm Club" in 1937 that the 17-year-old product of a local schoo] for the blind broke up the session-not only at the piano but also playing swing accordion. During the next ten years George Shearing recorded regularly with large and small groups, wrote arrangements for top British bands, and won, England’s Melody Maker poll six times as the country’s No. 1 Pianist. Shearing became interested in jazz after hearing records by Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller. His success in America has been amazing, but he lives happily and quietly with his wife and child at Staten Island, from which he travels regularly, despite his physical handicap, to fulfil engagements.

JANETTA McSTAY, PIANIST

* IN the evening of Tuesday, March 23, listeners to 2YC will hear a studio broadcast by the Nationa] Orchestra of the NZBS. At this performance a New Zealand pianist, Janetta McStay, will play, with the orchestra, Mendelssohn’s

Concerto No. 1 in ._G Minor. Miss McStay won a

scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where she was awarded a number of important pianoforte prizes, including the Walter MacFayren Gold Medal, the Challen Gold Medal and the Janet Duff Greet prize. During the war she toured in Great Britain and Europe, giving concerts arranged by the Music Division of ENSA. Since then she has appeared atl

in recitals in the chief towns of the British Isles and in tours organised by the Arts Council. She has also broadcast frequently in all Services of the BBC, including the Third Programme,

Recently Janetta McStay spent some time in Spain making a special study of Spanish music and adding many interesting pieces to her repertoire, ~~

THREE MEN AND A GIRL

aA "\VEAVER FAN" (New Plymouth): | Four years ago the folk-song singing group\of three men and a girl known as "The Weavers" was founded by one Pete Seeger. "The Weavers" set themselves out to interpret the music of the

people. Seeger, f instance, left Har. vard University to hitch-hike across

the country with his long-necked banjo; the material he gathered secured him a Tesearch post with the Library of Congress. The other members, Fred Hellerman and (Miss) Ronnie Gilbert, were counsellors at a children’s camp in New Jersey, where they came" into contact with" many regional ditties;~ while Lee Hayes, the rumbling voiced senior member of the group, was an itinerant

Methodist preacher in the ArkansasMissouri area. A set-back overtook "The Weavers" last year, according to the Musical Express, when "political pressure forced the cancellation of their best New York offer yet, merely because Pete Seeger had actively supported the Progressive candidate Henry Wallace in the 1948 Presidential elections. But happily this was an isolated incident."

SIR ARNOLD BAX

x "Music MASTER" (Thames) asks for some information about the late Sir Arnold Bax. Within sight of his 70th birthday Sir Arnold Bax, Master of the Queen’s Musick, died on October 3, 1953. Of

him Charles Beardsall, writing in the English magazine

Music, said: "His contribution to music, despite the neglect of his compositions during the last ten years, was very great, and his romantic idiom may yet receive its full and deserved acclaim. . . Despite the tendency to consider Bax ‘out of date’ the master of lyrical effects, especially when writing for orchestra, will be admired and enjoyed long after much of the contemporary repertoire has passed into oblivion. Coupled with his facets, not least of these being

"his reading of the most complicated score at the piano, was a power.of conversation amply spiced with wit which derived in the main from wide reading and much travel. . . Bax was not a great figure in_ public, for shy with those he did not know, he never courted pub- | lic favour, but his shyness reflected a determination to remain true to his own beliefs and not be swayed by everchanging moods of public opinion." ke

BOY ACTOR

YEs, "Bill" (Taihape), Ted Ray has a son, 14-year-old Andrew, who already has a reputation on films and

radio. He’s mad about sport, doesn’t like ice cream or jelly, but goes

for cheese and savoury dishes. He can learn an entire script in a week. *

PERPETUAL CONSERVATION

SUPPORTED on a stand in the form of a lyre, the violin, Guarneri del Gesiti, which Paganini once owned is on display in the City Hall of Genoa, Italy.

A sealed glass case covers the _ instrument. Paganini pro-

vided in his wil] that his violin should be "perpetually conserved" by the city of his birth. Now, for over 100 years, the fiddle has been taken out for inspection every two months, and once a year it is played by a specially selected violinist. Nicolo Paganini was such a brilliant performer and invested in so much glamour that in London crowds followed and touched him to see if he was real flesh and blood. His body was like a skeleton; his face was deadly pale; his nose was like an eagle’s beak. By way of variety he sometimes changed his appearance by sporting a wig and a handle-bar moustache. Paganini died in 1840 at the age of 58. *

FAMILY DAZE

WO years ago Jillian Squire wrote a series of stories about her familythe kind of family you see in every street in every suburb in New Zealand.

There are Jil] and John Squire and their three children. Sylvia

is a dreamy 14, Denis is 12 and husky -a front-row forward; Alan at six is the deceptively angelic type that teachers like to exhibit in the front row of the class. They are the permanents of the Squire household, but there’s always.

a floating population of cats, dogs, guinea pigs, tadpoles and white mice, and something’s always happening. Jillian Squire is the pen name of Joyce Thom, of Lower Hutt, and she has called her stories Family. Daze. Read by Allona Priestley, they have been recorded and are now being broadcast in 1YA’s Feminine Viewpoint on Mondays and Thursdays. They will be heard from 3YA in Mainly for Women on Wednesdays, starting on March 10; in 4YZ’s Women at Home, starting on March 30; in 4YA’s Topics for Women, starting on April 12; and in 2YA’s Women’s Session, starting on April 22. Jillian Squire told me the other day that the Family Daze stories are to be published in book form. She started to write four years ago when her father, Captain A. S. Gibson (known to listeners as "Binnacle") gave her an old typewriter and said, more or less, "Go to it.’ She writes fiction for magazines in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, and her market is now extending to England. "But Family Daze is absolute fact," she added. ah

BLOND BARITONE ’

nw "\{ILLIE O’DAY" (Belmont): Singers, like prophets, often find themselves without honour in their own countries, but when he was still a young man, Nelson Eddy was called "Philadelphia’s Own Baritone." His early con-

tacts with the world had little to do with music. He

went to work as a telephone operator in an iron foundry belonging to his uncle. Later he became a classified advertisement salesman and an advertising copywriter. Unable to afford a singing teacher, Eddy began studying music _ "on his own," learning operatic arias by playing gramophone records over and over, and then singing with the soloist. David Bispham was the singer’s first voice teacher, and Eddy’s first stage appearance was in January, 1922, in a musical play callled The Marriage Tax, ziven at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. I noticed some months ago in an overseas publication a suggestion that Nelson Eddy might visit New Zealand, but that’s as far as it went. His brother Alan, who also sings, visited New Zealand in 1947.

ATRICIA McCORMICK (Sydenham, Christchurch): Thank you for your good wishes, Patricia. Your question was answered recently in a reply to "Music Lover," ‘of Gisborne,