Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 813, 25 February 1955, Page 24

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD

BURSARY WINNER

N.P.S. photograph ¢¢ FT hasn't been very easy," Judith Clark told us when we interviewed her about her recent award of a Government bursary for two years’ piano study in Britain. "Unfortunately, just about the only interest possible outside of music has been ballet." And we believed her, Miss Clark started learning the piano in her home town, Wellington, when she was about nine. Over the last ten .years she has practised the piano, studied for her piano exams (she has her L.R.S.M.), taught the piano,

potn privarely anda as ali assistant music teacher at Scots College, and during the last two years has

gone well on the way towards her Mus, Bach. degree at Victoria ~ College. Judith Clark has applied to spend her two years overseas at the Royal Academy, London. When her bursary finishes, shé will return to New Zealand and hopes then to continue teaching, broadcasting-listeners will remember her playing in a recent edition of Owen Jensen’s Music Magazine-and generally fitting into the musical life of Wellington and east Dominion.

SONG OF THE ISLANDS

Islands towards the end of last year in the 2 Royal New Zealand Navy |W \HEN Bryan O’Brien visited the Fiji | :

-_ corvette Tui, he took his tape recorder with him, However, the sounds of shipboard and shore-leave did not entirely fill up the spools. He recorded enough of the beautiful singing of the Islands to make up five quarter-hour programmes, which he has called Fiji, Land of Song. In the first programme

listeners will visit the famous Ballentine Fijian Girls’ School at Lami. In the — next,

Fiji's picturesque Police Force Choir, massive, bare-foot giants in battledress jackets and white sulus, sing anthems and folk songs. The Methodist Church ~- has always had a strong influence in the Islands, so Bryan O’Brien also went along to listen to their Jubilee Church

Choir, whose voices combine in organlike harmonies, The programme, "A Fijian Christmas," celebrates Christ’s birth in songs and carols sung in the native tongue. Finally, Bryan O’Brien presents a selection of choral music in a variety of Fijian settings. Fiji, Land

of Song, will be heard from all YA stations, beginning at 7.35 p.m. this Saturday, February 26. The four subsequent programmes will begin at 7.30 p.m. on Saturdays.

ESTATE IN TUSCANY

N Italian estate in Tuscany which contains 38 farms and where life moves on almost feudal lines, is de- | scribed by Dr. Gerda Eichbaum-Bell, in » a talk, "A Country House in Italy," to be heard from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, March 3. Dr. Eichbaum-Bell, who is librarian in the Education Department Library in Wellington, spent some days living on the estate during a recent visit to Italy. She says it was

life ferent New sheep completely dilfrom that on Zealand's big stations — the

villa, for instance, has 12 indoor servants, a "superabundance of domestic staff, which was rather overwhelming to a New Zealander." The staff work long and exacting hours, and there’s nk, ie ay

always a social barrier between master and servant, she says. On the other hand, they are well looked after, and their small and big problems are the concern of the: master or miStress of the house who examine and try to solve them. Another difference from New Zealand is that the peasants who produce the wine, tobacco, olive oil and wheat, and’ look after the cattle and the dozen pedigree bulls on the estate, do not receive money, but are paid in kind; about 50 per cent of the products go to them. ‘

THREE IN A ROW

HE programme of music by the Kaikorai Brass Band to be heard in the National programme on Sunday, March 6-mentioned on page 6-will be of special interest to lovers of band music, for this New Zealand champion band will in the same week be defending its title at the national band

contest in AucKiand. ihe contest itself will sbe a great testing time for members of the band, for

a win in the championship this year would be the fourth in succession. Formed in 1881, the Kaikorai Band has had a notable record at national contests under such conductors as E. Stratton, G. B. Laidlaw and H. F. Davie, and as long ago as 1903 paid the first of two visits to Australia to attend the Ballarat Contest. The second was in 1920. Since national contests were resumed after the Second World War, the band has attended every contest, and has been specially successful since N. A. Thorn became conductor in 1949. When the band won the Aggregate for the championship of New Zealand, the Hymn Test and the Quickstep at the 1952 contest, the English judge, Eric Ball, said he expected it would go far under its young conductor; and after the band had successfully defended its title next year, the well-known English conductor, Harry Mortimer, in praising its performance, compared it with leading British bands. In winning the championship last year for the third succes-

sive time, it was successful in two Test selections, the Hymn Test, the Quickstep and the Street March. Besides this exceptional record at national contests in recent years, the Kaikdérai Band has won a fine reputation for*its service to the City of Dunedin,

BROADCASTING BOX

AVE you ever seen a microphone shrouded in an old scarf? A commentator standing in the wind and the rain on a lonely embankment talking animatedly to himself? An angry techni-

cian admonishing the near-by utterer of ribald comments? These are just a

few of the perils which beset the broadcaster at an open-air sports meeting. His defences are small indeed. Certainly the scarf stops the wind from whistling through your receiving set. A

Taincoat may or may.not keep the unhappy commentator dry. Against those who push him or slap his back in their excitement an umbrella makes an excellent fend-off. But there is no remedy for the slab-footed spectator who, in heaving his way to a vantage point, trips over the power cable and wrenches it out of the portable relay gear. With the erection of a broadcasting box at the Olympic Stadium, Newmarket, Auckland, these little tribulations have withered away. he box, which measures 10ft. by 8ft., keeps the crowd at a distance, shelters the commentator and protects the relay equipment from the guileless saboteur. From™ this position the commentator has an uninterrupted view of the track, which will be the scene of the National Athletic Championships on March 11 and 42: *

FIRST PERFORMANCES

SEVERAL works by English composers will have their first performance in New Zealand in a short series of programmes to be broadcast by the~-bari-tone Donald Munro and the Alex Lindsay String Quartet from YC stations during the next few weeks. The series begins on Wednesday, March 2, at 7.35

p-m., with songs by George Butterworth which Mr. Munro has previously sung

with the Quartet. In subsequent weeks works of Geoffrey Bush, Eric Fogg and Martin Shaw will be heard for the first time in this country. Mr. Munro, who has also been heard with the Quartet singing a Coronation programme of Elizabethan songs, said he chose the works in the new series because they were out of the ordinary , and interesting in the differences of styles they displayed. Commenting on the first programme, he said that George Butterworth, who was killed on the Somme in 1916, had been active in the movement for the revival of : English folk songs and dances, and this influence could be seen in much of his music. The song cycle, Love Blows as the Wind Blows, which Munro will sing with the Lindsay Quartet, was set to poems by Henley. Ralph Vaughan Williams was among those who praised it after the composer’s death.