Bright Work at Town Hall

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 22

Bright Work at Town Hall

E Nace in Wellington has got away to a flying start for 1956. On March 19, for the first big concert of the year the Town Hall was jammed full, right up to its organ loft. Besides the regulars in the audience there were big parties of teen-agers ready to let themselves go, people of all ages trying out jazz for the first time, and a few proféssional musicians from "the other side." The place was stacked until it wouldn’t take any more. Holding the floor was Don Richardson’s Band. The atmosphere was just right, and the band gave the best performance ever. When the smaller groups got going on Dixie there was no holding the audience back. They joined in the numbers with such vigour they could have been heard out at Pencarrow Head. To the players it was "an alltime high"-a great beginning to 1956 jazz. The press said of the big band that "it was the next best thing to being out of this world-it was out of

this country. We don’t often hear brasswork like it -here." The show’s success was a sufprise to the organisers-until a day or so before the concert, bookings had been poor. The hundreds who waited outside and were turned away, as well as jazz fans all over the country, will be glad to hear that the "Fifth Festival of Jazz," an hour’s programme taken from the tape recorded at the concert, will soon be on the air. Compered by Turntable, it features Don Richardson’s Band and continues, the style of presentation created last year. Included in tHe band are Johnny Williams on alto sax, Laurie Lewis on tenor sax, Dorsey Cameron on trombone, Mike Gibbs on trumpet, Vern Clare on drums, Ron Weatherburn on alto sax and clarinet, Bob Barcham on piano, Stewart Carpinter on trumpet, and vocalist Ivy Rodan. It hits 2YD at 9.0 p.m. on April 19, 1YA at 10.0 p.m, on May 10, and then goes on around’ the YAs. It certainly looks as if the capital city has a big new audience for jazz. The National Orchestra will have to look to its laurels.

What Price Freedom? HEN Marie Novak married Ivan Ravensky, a Russian in the Diplomatic Corps in Prague, just after the war she did not know the terrible price she would have to pay. As soon as the Iron Curtain came down, Marie was ordered not to see her family. In defiance she did so, not realising that her

family home had become the _ headquarters of a resistance movement. Her husband orders her to Russia, but already Marie is deeply involved in the movement and her love for her husband is dead. She and her family are sent to a labour camp, and their escape to free dom demands great sacrifices of them My Heart’s Desire, starring Dinah Shearing as Marie, is the new serial at 10.30 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1ZB and 2ZB. It will begin in May from 3ZB and 4ZB. ‘ t ’ ‘