Nigel Eastgate

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 790, 10 September 1954, Page 29

Nigel Eastgate

MEDICINE and music sometimes mix rather well. Borodin, the great Russian composer, for instance, was a doctor and scientist who composed as a spare-time occupation, "in obedience to an irresistible impulse." The same impulse seems to have been behind the compositions of Nigel Eastgate, of Dun-

edin, who has been taking medical and musical courses concurrently at Otago University since 1948. This is the final year of his medical studies, but he still has some more of his music degree to go. In his leisure time-what leisure he ' has-he is a keen badminton player. Nigel Eastgate was born in 1930 and educated at Christ’s College, Christchurch. By his own account he has "doodled in musical composition" since he was 14. In 1952 he won a competition organised by the Dunedin Music FeStival Committee for a choral work for youth choir with Sea Carnival. This was a setting of some poems by his fellow-student Colin Newbury, who was later a post-graduate student at the Australian National University. Included in the present series of programmes of works by New Zealand composers is his song cycle Home is the Sailor, a setting of some poems by John Masefield. They are sung by Ninian Walden (bass), with the composer at the piano. Nigel Eastgate has also had a large-scale choral work, Three Choral Psalms, accepted by the Christchurch Harmonic Society. Nigel Eastgate broadcasts frequently, both as solo pianist and as a reviewer and speaker about music, Earlier this year he presented six illustrated talks under the light-hearted title of Bach Won't Bite. His aim was to introduce the great composer to those who are still nervous of him. He has now in preparation another series called Listening to Music, which will be broadcast next month,