Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 18

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS ON AND OFF THE RECORD

FAVOURITES

\V HEN Decima Dickson (above) called the other day to talk to us about her new programme, Your Favourites and Mine, now being heard from 2YA on Thursday evenings, she mentioned that she had arranged seven such series in the last nine years, and that last

year the programmes were broadcast from Radio New Zealand.

"The artists heard last time weren’t available this year," she said, "so I suggested. we have a more varied programme." There will be a _ different singer each week. Corinne Bridge, Clifford Dowling, Peggy Roberts, Louis Doyle and Thomas Hanna will appear in that order, and Sandra Gunn and Ngaire Stead, of the National Orchestra, will play solos, while Mrs. Dickson will accompany them and also play piano solos. For works for two pianos, Cherry Dunn will join her. "These programmes are descriptive music-favourite pieces which tell a story and set a mood,’ Mrs Dickson year, Their daughter Loretta, who is still at college, is an accomplished singer who has lately been heard once a month said. "They’re planned to meet an ap-

parent desire of listeners for music with a story and music which they love. I was quite surprised at the tremendous variety of descriptive piano music I'd collected over the years. All the songs have a story, so it’s quite natural to use them as a contrast. I wanted to arrange a series of familiar and beautiful music." So last year, before Christmas, Mrs Dickson asked the performers to select music which they would like to have in such a programme. Later she collected their suggestions and began to choose items, arranging them into interesting and varied groups, with a defined yet changing mood. She then gave the outline of the session to Linda Hastings, who worked on the linking script and will be commere for the show. Previous shows have been rehearsed as a whole, but with this larger group of ‘artists rehearsals have had to be in various places at their convenience, and this has meant a good deal of work for Mrs Dickson-to be fitted in with her work as an accompanist at 2YA and 2YC, as well as her duties as a housewife. Mrs Dickson is the wife of Hamilton Dickson, well known in the light opera world. He has just finished his second opera, which will be produced later this in the 2YA Children’s Session. Mrs Dickson finds that their common interest in music is wonderful. "We’re a very happy household," she says, "because we're all in it together. We've so far managed to arrange our activities so they don’t clash and we're not doing too much at the same time. I have my _programme now, and Hamilton’s opera is later, and we have time to help each other." Mrs Dickson’s final thought was for the new programme. "We all hope that between us we’ve prepared a half-hour of music that listeners can enjoy. It’s an informal programme, and we hope that these songs and melodies, our favourites, will give as much pleasure to our listeners as they have given to us."

WESTLAND POET

OR the Greymouth poet Duncan Hardie writing meditative verse has always been something of an emotional safety valve. "I’ve written verse since I was at primary school, and I’ve had quite a lot published in newspapers, in book form and in reviews," he says. Mr

Hardie writes copiously, often "just for the fun of it"

-sometimes he writes letters in verse. Last year one of his poems was selected as a test piece at the Greymouth Com-petitions-a meditative poem which he wrote some years ago on a beautiful summer’s evening when he had gone for a stroll, "sat down on a hill, watched the sunset, and mused on it and admired it until I fell into a meditative mood." Now in the furnishing business in Greymouth, Mr. Hardie is a family man who spent his early life in the Buller district. There he led the outdoor life,

taking part in most boys’ activities and particularly athletics, football and scouting. Though as a boy he had a remarkable memory for poetry, he maintains that he was a "very ordinary scholar," as he preferred games to school work, He has worked in various parts of the West Coast, mainly at bush contracting, sawmilling, building construction, furniture-making and guiding at the Fox Glacier. In a radio portrait of Mr: Hardie, to be heard in the 3YZ Women’s’ Session this Friday (March 29) several of his poems will be read by’ Alice Bourke. — wy

SEISMOLOGIST

Lol F you had started at secondary school on the day of the Napier earthquake and had felt an earthquake also during the final prize-giving ceremony, it might have crossed your mind that fate was giving you a shove of some sort. We don’t know whether those shocks had any special significance for George

Eiby, but a few years later he turned up at the Seismological

Observatory at Wellington, where he's quite happy making a study of earthquakes his life’s work. Listeners will hear the last of his three talks on earthquakes in the Main National Programme this Sunday (March 31). "T’ve been interested in scientific work since my school days, though my main interest originally was astronomy," Mr

Eiby told us. "I had been doing a physics degree at Victoria University College when I came to the Seismological Observatory. There I soon found that earthquakes were a worthwhile field of study." Astronomy is still a lively interest for Mr Eiby, however, and you'll often find him at the Carter Observatory on a Friday night, lecturing, pointing the telescope, or even taking the money at the door. Mr Eiby has lived in Wellington most of his life, and felt those schoolday earthquakes at Wellington College. During the war he spent four years in the Air Force in Britain. Interested in drama from his university days, he took it up more seriously while overseas when he did some stage designing. When he came back home he liked what Wellington’s Unity Theatre was doing, and since then has worked mainly with them. Altogether he has designed about 25 major shows, and lately there has been a bit of production as well. Mr. Eiby admitted he had also played a small part or two, which he regards as necessary "experience; but he has no ambitions in this direction. Because of scientific observations he expects to have to drop out of theatrical activity during the International Geophysical Year. Films, he told us, are another interest, and have been for many years, and he was a member of the British Film Institute long before the Film Society movement started in New Zealand. When we asked Mr Ejiby about his book on earthquakes, soon to be pub-. lished in Britain and America, he said it was written on something like the level of his broadcast talks. Actually, it wasn’t started as a book at all, but grew from a series of pieces which he used to write on wet weekends. When Mr Ejiby realised he had enough to make a book he wrote asking an English publisher if he would be interested in the material if it were "polished up." He was a bit surprised when the publisher replied he was interested in —

it as it stood. Then the real work be-gan-illustrations had to be arranged, proofs read, and so on. "It was much harder than writing a book," said Mr Eiby. Those illustrations, incidentally, went far beyond the negotiation of reproduction rights, for the author drew 54 of them himself,