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, POPULAR CONTRALTO
¢¢7T STARTED to learn singing when I was 19," Rae Gibbons (contralto), of Wellington, said when we asked her about her broadcast from YA stations and 3YZ next Wednesday, May 18, with Henry Rudolph and the Capital Quartet in Music With a Smile and a Song. "No one else in the family learnt to sing or play the piano dr any other instrument. But for the
titions in Napier, Weilington and Lower Hutt." Rae explained that she had competed
twice at Napier, winning two. gold medals, twice in Wellington, winning two more gold medals, and two diamond rings, and twice in Lower Hutt, where she won two championship cups-all in four years. In that time she has also done a good deal of broadcasting, and is frequently heard from 2YA and 2ZB. She has broadcast from the NZBS shortwave station, Radio New Zealand, and took part in 2ZB’s last Radio *Talent Quest a few years ago. She said she has also sung in 2YA’s Wednesday evening Scottish session, The Gathering
of the Clans, "I’d like to do more radio work," she said when weasked her about the future. "I'd also like to sing in Messiah and-do other oratorio work on the concert platform. "
CLARINETTIST ANNA
a AS all bagpipers and their neighbours know, a piper practises on an instrument called a chanter to keep his mouth in right condition-or, as he puts it, to "keep. his embouchure tight." That’s' something that Anna Russell
does, too, but she told us when she was in Wellington during
her tour that more recently she has been practising on the clarinet to get the same effect. In the end she thinks she may be able to play
the clarinet as well, and she didn’t deny that eventually some sort of clarinet takeoff might appear in one of her programmes. "I've so far had only one clarinet lesson," she said, "but I also have one of those books that tell you how to do it. On the bagpipes I had three lessons" (here she broke into a _ broad Scots accent) "from Murdoch Buchanan, who has been a Gold Medallist at Edinburgh Castle. He’s a panic." Miss Russell said that bagpipes were — all right so long as you could stay at home* and practise. "But when you take them on the road you can’t blow them in,’ she
said, "and half the time they won't work." Listeners will. remember Miss Russell’s acknowledgment at her last Wellington and Auckland concerts that the pipes she played then were blown in
by the police in Wellington. As for Miss — Russell’s other wind instrument, the — French horn, she pointed out that in her concert item she plays only about three notes on it. Every French horn was different, anyway, she said, but she did have another at home on which she could play a tune.
JACK ROBERTS TRIO
‘| HE Jack Roberts Trio, which was formed six months ago, has won for itself the acclaim of many northern listeners. The Trio consists of Jack@
Roberts (piano), — George Campbell (bass), and _ Brian
Spence (drums), and it broadcasts popular music monthly from 1YA. Jack Roberts will be remem. _
bered for his Saturday Evening Cocktail programme which he broadcast weekly from 1YA last year, but his radio work dates back to the mid-thirties. In Dunedin he played with Dick Colvin’s Band and_ broadcast from both 4YA and 4ZB. During the war years he was a member of the 2YA Camp Concert Party, and in 1946 he joined the Kiwis. "I had been married only a week before we left on the Australian tour," Jack said, "so my wife decided to come too and make it our honeymoon. That honeymoon with the Kiwis lasted eight years." Music is a full-time _job for Tack Roberts. 4
When he left the Kiwis he began teaching the piano, Like most top-line pops pianists he is equally conversant with the serious style and teaches both. He also leads a four-piece dance band at One Tree Hill, and’ plays in Crombie Murdoch's group for the Radio Roadhouse show. In his spare moments he ‘enjoys gardening and swimming. The next broadcast from 1YA, by the Jack Roberts Trio will be on Thursday, May 19, at 8.0 p.m. "4 WAS influenced to sing these songs by my wife, whose maiden name was Flora McDonald," Gerald Christeller said when we asked him about the three recitals of Songs of the Hebrides, which are -at present) being broadcast
from 2YA on Tuesday evenings. In these recitals he! ‘is accompanied by Dorothea Franchi at the harp, and he explained that though the compositicns are folk songs set for piano and voice by Kennedy .Fraser, the piano settings are also very suitable for harp, for which they were rearranged. "The harp
SONGS OF THE HEBRIDES
gives an authentic note to the broadcasts," he said, "as the folk songs were probably originally sung with harp accompaniment in the Islands." He added
that he has always been very keenly interested in folk songs.
"Perhaps through living in different countries and being a linguist I have a closer approach to folk music," he said. Gerald Christeller is best known as a lieder singer, and he tecently studied singing in France and Holland. At the centenary celebrations of a Dutch broadcasting station which took place while he was abroad he was invited to sing a leading part in Brahms’s Requiem. He has also done studio broadcasts with the National Orchestra since his return. -™
SCRIPTWRITER
ARTHUR E. JONES, producer and scriptwriter of the programme Operation Safeguard, which was broadcast from 1YA recently, said that six years of scriptwriting for the NZBS had led him to many unusual places. Among the programmes he had scripted
were Meet the Mansons, which was described as one of the
first serials with a New Zealand flavour; Johnny April (in 52 parts); the 1ZB radio pantomimes Cinderella and Dick Whittington; the Christmas variety show You’re Welcome; and a number of
documentaries and features, including Emergency in Malaya, Prisoners of Silence, and Marine Millions, the last-named about the salvaging of the Niagara’s gold. "I came out here from England with ,my wife and family -for the sunshine,
really — about six years ago," he said. "I had worked in Fleet Street for the Associated Press, and was a free lance contributor to a variety of publications before I emigrated. My toughest job for the NZBS was that of writing all the commentaries for the South African team at the British Empire Games in Auckland. We
had to do two 15-minute broadcasts a day on the team’s activities. Don Donaldson read them and I wrote them, and it nearly killed me." When we asked him about his spare-time activities, he said, "An Australian publisher was interested in the possibility of turning Johnny April (which is now being broadcast in Australia as well) into a novel. That gave me an incentive, and I’ve just completed a 90,000 word Johnny April novel in six weeks, writing in the evenings. I wrote 3000 words a night, which worked out at a thousand words an hour, and it was all new material, too. The manuscript went off to England a fortnight ago." r
DOCTOR'S DILEMMAS
"HEY told Betty Box you couldn’t possibly make a film of it-too episodic, they said. But Betty, a determined film-maker, though she caught up with the book of Doctor in
the House late (she saw it on a railway station book-stall months after it came out) she was nevertheless first in. with
a shooting-schedule for this "unfilmable" book. To all those New Zea- —
landers who have giggled -and guffawed through med. school with the students of St. Swithin’s, the BBC Picture Parade edition of Doctor in the House (now going the rounds of National and Commercial stations) should bring back an outsize case of stitches in the humerus. Besides extracts from the soundtrack of the film, there are interviews with Dirk Bogarde, Betty Box ‘and Richard Gordon, author of the book. There are sidelights, too, like the story of the dear old lady watching the filming of the ~scrimmage for the. gorilla mascot, Its arms got pulled off, so she called out: "Why don’t yer take my old ~ man instead-he looks like a g’rilla and is arms don’t come orf!"
NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550513.2.58
Bibliographic details
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 28
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1,394Open Microphone New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 28
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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