POP SINGERS ‘LACK TRAINING’

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30481, 1 July 1964, Page 5

POP SINGERS ‘LACK TRAINING’

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, July 29. If there were no teen-age girls to worship the rock ’n’ roll singers, they would "have to be replaced by other fans —perhaps kangaroos, said Mr Maurice Bonney, American guest conductor with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra, in Wellington today. Mr Bonney, 41-year-old resident conductor of the Albuquerque Civic Symphony Orchestra in New Mexico, said he was perturbed to learn that £2OO worth of damage had been caused during Beatles shows in the Town Hall last week by girls jumping on the seats. He remarked that there were many popular singers with great artistry. “Frank Sinatra is a very fine pop singer, and so is Bing Crosby and Benny Goodman is a musician I admire very much. “But most of the present rock ’n’ roll singers have had no legitimate training,” he said.

During his fortnight’s visit to New Zealand, he will conduct the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra in a public concert in Wellington. Concerned about what he termed the “deep void” in school curricula, Mr Bonney said he thought schools should have a much more concentrated and intelligent system of teaching appreciation of great music and the classics in all forms of art. Pupils in State schools, he

said, were not getting any “high musical art presentation” in their curricula. When they reached the age of 12 or 13, therefore, their interests centred on musical pop entertainment.

“It would be interesting to go into the Russian schools and see what they are doing,” the American conductor said. “I am sure the average Russian child is much better informed, so far as art and music are concerned, than the average American child because of their strictness and the patterns that communism itself tends to fall into.

“It is a philosophy of being herded together. Also, you must remember that nothing new is allowed to go into Russia,” he said.