Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 821, 22 April 1955, Page 28

Open Microphone

NAPIER WOMEN’S SESSION

HIRLEY ANDERSON, who is in charge of the Napier Women’s Session from 2YZ, joined the staff there just over six years ago. After two years in Napier she spent twelve months at Head Office Programmes in Wellington before going to England and the Continent for a visit. While she was in the United Kingdom she became a keen theatre-goer and ballet fan. She was also

able to see the BBC Television Studios at Lime Grove in opera-

ation, and was most impressed by the variety of the programmes in production there. Arriving back home in Napier early in 1953, she returned to announcing duties at 2YZ, and was one of the commentators on the Royal Tour. In her new position in charge of the Women’s Session she will have many opportunities to combine her programming and announcing experience. However, work isn’t everything to Shirley. She is keenly interested in music and drama, badminton, tennis and golf. *

GLENDA AT HOME

O her many close friends the Australian soprano Glenda Raymondwho enjoys an ever-increasing popularity with the Australian public-has

other claims to fame apart from her lovely voice. She is an excellent cook, a keen gardener, and also a chauffeur; She

often acts im the. lastnamed capacity for her husband, Hector Crawford, driving him to the

office in the morning and then doing the household shopping. After a long concert tour Glenda likes to relax in her oldfashioned house with its white shutters, chintz covers and gleaming mahogany, and work in her lovely garden. Glenda Raymond is also an enthusiastic tennis player. She is being heard here at present in the programme Glenda, which is broadcast from ZB stations on Sunday evenings.

MUSIC MASTER

AS Lecturer in Music at Dunedin "" Training College, G. E. Wilkinson, who takes the Broadcasts to Schools Singing Lesson on Thursday afternoons, has had a considerable influence on thé teaching of music in many New Zealand schools. He was educated primarily as a school teacher, but his decided leaning towards music soon made him active as

a pianist, accompanist, and later organist. Seven years as organist and choirmaster at the Wesley Church,

Oamaru, were tollowed by a_=e similar period at Columbia Presbyterian Church, Oamaru, and eleven years as music master at Waitaki Boys’ High School. During his residence at Oamaru he produced many choral works with various choral organisations, and some of New Zealand’s finest soloists were associated with him in the almost annual production of Messiah: When he was appointed Lecturer in Music at Dunedin Training College the Training College Choral Society was organised. From 1946 to this year he has been organist and choirmaster at the First Presbyterian Church, and he has given broadcast recitals on the First Church organ. In 1952 he was conductor of a massed choir of secondary schools at the Dunedin Music Festival, and last year he was chorus master for the secondary school girls’ choir at the Royal Concert. He has been conductor of primary

ia as schools’ music festivals at various centres in Otago and Southland, and a Competitions judge at Invercargill, Timaru, Wellington, Hamilton and Greymouth. This year he will be a Competitions judge at Palmerston North in May, and

at Wellington in August. The choir which sings for him in the Thursday afternoon Singing .-Lesson broadcasts is from the Dunedin North Intermediate School.

ELEGANT BRUNETTE

VEN the most experienced broadcasters will tell.you there’s a big difference between going "live" on the air and recording beforehand on tape or discs One experienced radio actress, Mary Wimbush — who plays Maggie Tulliver in the BBC production of The Mill on the Floss in the Main National Programme on Sundays — admits that she has such an attack of nerves when she

Droadcasts "live, that its only with a great effort of concentration that she can overcome it.. She recalls

One occasion, in fact, when she read a story for a quarter of an hour "without a drop of saliva in my mouth." Concentration is her regular antidote for nerves, and this along with sincerity she considers the principal quality needed by anyone who hopes to succeed in radio. A tall, elegant brunette in her early thirties, Mary Wimbush has acting in her blood, for her father was on the stage till hé was disabled in the First World War, and her mother was a student at the Academy of Dramatic Art. Mary went to the Central School of Dramatic Art and played in repertory till 1946, when a friend suggested that she should get an audition for radio. Since then she has become one of the . most versatile and highly regarded of ‘ the younger actresses heard on the air. Mary Wimbush is married and has a small son. One of her favourite recreations is. swimming, and she reads a great deal, On the domestic side she admits that she "loves darning" and is a "good plain cook," though a bit short of ideas. She also has a liking for antique furniture and fine china and wishes they were cheap enough for her to collect. *

oN ITH Betty we're doing old evergreens like ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ and ‘Only a_ Rose," Henry |

A SMILE AND A SONG

Rudolph said when we asked him about his new series of broadcasts from a link of all YA stations and 3YZ, in which he directs the Capital Quartet with Betty Evans and other soloists. "The boys are doing numbers like "The Good Green Acres of Home,’ which is one of Rudy Vallee’s songs; "The March of the Gren-

adiers’; and a comedy number called ‘How Delaney’s Donkey Won the Half Mile Race." For

" Jean McPherson, our soloist in the ~?, second broadcast, we've made up a Scottish programme with songs like ‘A Gordon for Me, and ‘Granny’s Hielan’ Hame.’ The last one was new to me, so she sang it over the phone and I took it down," he said, adding that as usual he was doing all his own arrangements of the songs. His soloists in the thirde and fourth programmes will be Ken Macaulay and Rae Gibbons, and the members of the Capital Quartet at present are Frank Malthus, Joe Miller, Bruce Chandler and John Dellow. "John McDonald has gone to Auckland,’ Henry told us, "so Joe Miller has taken his place as second tenor, and John Dellow takes over Joe’s old place as baritone in the quartet." The series is being programmed under

the title Music With a Smile and a Song, and starts at 8.18 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27. Henry added that his first soloist, Betty Evans, had accompanied him to Korea with the Sixth Korea Concert Party last year, where she was very

popular with the troops and was frequently asked to sing additional songs in the messes, apart from her pars: work in the shows.

OPERATION SAFEGUARD

"THE air deferices of Auckland were sorely tried on Saturday, March 5, for on that day the city was "bombed" by "enemy" planes. A hit was scored by an R.N.Z.A.F. Devon aircraft on the King’s Wharf power station, but the "raider" was "shot down" by Mustang and Vampire fighters before it could do any further damage. Operation Safeguard was the name given to the air

defence exercise, and it is also the name of the programme about the exercise which will be

broadcast from 1YA at 9.30 p.m. this ‘Saturday, April 23. The exercise gave valuable instruction to the many servicemen and servicewomen involved. An . underground headquarters was

manned as a control centre for the city’s air Cefence, and there, in a concrete chamber 50 feet below the surface, Rex Sayers, of 1YA, was able to observe and describe the scope of the operations.

Another commentator, Bruce Broadhead, spent the day at the radar posts and with the anti- _ aircraft batteries, and a third, Doug Laurenson, joined the "enemy" and flew with the attacking bombers. The exercise was also

valuable for the lessons learned, and some of these lessons are discussed in the broadcast by the Air Defence Commander for the operation, Wing Commander. J. R. Maling, of Christchurch. The Chief of Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal W..H. Merton (above) also recorded his impressions, and these are included in the programme, which was protnces by Arthur E. Tones.

MUSICAL WALRUS

[N 1952 Max'Saunders wrote a delightful musical version of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. A year later he made a musical adaptation of two of Edward Lear’s nonsense poems, which he called The Jumblies and the Dong. Last January he achieved what the Radio Times recently called his "hat-

trick" with a broadcast in the BBC’s Third Programme of. a musical version ~ of Lewis Carroll’s well-known

poem The’ Wairus and the Carpenter. Saunders is described by Radio Times as "a New Zealander who has been writing music for the BBC for more than 20 years." He comes from Auckland and his photograph once appeared on our cover (on February 4, 1944), He describes The Walrus and the Carpenter as "a melodrama for some voices and a few instruments." The highly original music includes a four-part fugue for "But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat .. ."

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