WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU HAVE A FINE VOICE

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 25, 2 December 1938, Page 6

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU HAVE A FINE VOICE

REE and a half years ago she lived in the pretty river city of Wanganui... a few months ago in Sydney she heard Tauber say that her voice was the best produced of all he had heard on his tour. This is what happens to an attractive New Zealand girl when she has the contralto voice of a Julie Werry. Back in New Zealand again last week for a month’s holiday at Wanganui before beginning a six-weeks tour for the NBS, Julie Werry told the ‘‘Record"’ of some of her adventures. _ Biggest thrill of all, when she first went to Australia to study under Madame’ Emily Marks, former Wellington teacher, who taught Essie Ackland, was being runner-up in the Sydney Eisteddfod out of 70 voices in the operatic aria. Since then have come concert recitals, broadcasting, singing for societies and parties, and Far West. tours. . Far West tours are held in New South Wales three times a year for crippled children’s hospitals. Parties of nine go into the outhack to give those eoncerts. They eram concerts for 12 towns into a fortnight. On a Far West tour, Julie. Werry went to the opal mining town of Walgett, where men with-sombreros sit with | their wives on:the steps. There were big station hold‘ings nearby, where there had

been a 14months drought and not a blade of grass to. be seen. On one station it had cost £150 a day to feed the stock. Every day trains came out from the mountain country carrying water for the drought-stricken areas. From The Outback People came from 90 miles around to hear the concerts in the outback of Australia. At the little town of Giralambone there was only an hotel, a store ‘and a few houses, yet, in the evening the’ concert hall was packed. Every town she went, she geemed to find a New Zea-

lander. She was billed as the New Zealand soprano and all the lone New Zealanders came to greet her. "We want to meet the New Zealand girl,’ they said. That was one side of Australian life. The other side she saw was Sydney-side. She. sang her lieder songs at gatherings like the Rose Bay Music Society, but best of all people liked the Maori songs. They never tired of them. She liked singing for societies like ‘this. ‘‘You can do good musie at those gatherings, because good musicians belong.’’ When she sang before the Rose Bay Music Society, the other soloist was the bass singer Walter Kingsley, brother’ "to Humphrey Bishop, of Wellington, well known to New Zealand radio listeners for his songs at the piano. One year she was soloist at a. gathering of the Royal Apollo Club. They asked her to sing the ‘‘Poi Song’? in honour of. the New Zealand composer Alfred Hill, a past president of the elub. The Pacific Islands Club made her an honorary member beeause of her Maori songs. ~The. elub had members from Rarotonga, . Tahiti, Hawaii: Fiji, Samoa: and New Zealand. Hostess to the club 1 is a. Samoan princess. :

Her Maori Songs She sang her Maori songs at the elub’s reception to Count von Luckner, and to Tauber and his accompanist, Perey Kahn. **You should come to London,’’ they said, ‘‘you have a perfect voice for musica] comedy."’

She was delighted because Kahn gave her three lessons while he was there. He is wellknown as a composer as well as an accompanist. ‘(Will you go to England?’’ asked the ‘‘Record.’’ ‘Some day,’’? said Julie Werry, ‘‘I hope."’