1YA and 4YA

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 35, 15 March 1929, Page 7

1YA and 4YA

Station Managers Exchanged ees AA R. LEN. BARNES has taken up the duties of station manager at 4YA. an exchange having been arranged with Mr. S. J. Hayden, who is now station manager at 4YA. During the last few months Mr. Barnes has had a wide experience in broadcasting. Befor leaving Wellington he was for a term programme organiser and then acting station manager at 2YA. Fol9wing that, Mr. J. W. Webb, station r at 4YA, resigned, and, it being holiday time in the music teaching world, Mr. Barnes accepted a temporary appointment at Dunedin. Then he

agreed to accept a permanent engagement with the company, and was appointed to Dunedin. Mr. Barnes is well known in musieal circles throughout New Zealand. As a boy, he was for five years a chorister in Christchurch Anglican Cathedral, and he has been singing ever since. He was baritone lay clerk for six years, and he sang for choral and orchestral societies in Christchurch and Wellington. In 1919 he went to Amerjta and since then his time has been entirely to professional musica] Work. He studied in America and. was extensively engaged in grand and comic opera and cycle work. From America he went to England in 1922 and continued his musical studies there. He was for five months with a concert party in the Isle of Wight, and incidentally it was his engagement with this party which prevented him from singing for the British Broadcasting Corporation, for which he had had an audition and been marked V.G. Since returning to New Zealand five years ago he has been teaching singing in Wellington, where he entered actively into the musical life of the city. He was conductor for the Orpheus Musical Society and of the Wellington Amateur Theatrical Society, and for four years had been choirmaster of the Terrace Congregational Church. Yor nearly two years Mr. Barnes was a regular singer at 2YA, and some of the performances which he has conducted have been broadcast. While in America Mr. ~Barnes frequently sang for radio.