Fields of music closer today

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32874, 24 March 1972, Page 5

Fields of music closer today

Different fields of music were more readily accepting and learning from one another today, Miss Barbara Kirkby-Mason said in Christchurch yesterday. "Serious music is taking some of its influence from pop, and vice versa,” she said. “Eastern and Western music are learning a lot from each other.

“In Japan, particularly, the Western style of music is being combined with their own,” she said. Miss Kirkby-Mason is a former examiner for the Trinity College of Music, London, and a prominent British music educationist. Now working freelance, she is in New Zealand on a lecture and recital tour.

In Christchurch, she is the guest of the Christchurch Society of Registered Music Teachers and will conduct this evening and tomorrow a seminar on various aspects of music tuition for members of the society and senior pupils. “I feel it is important for music teachers to be kept up to date with teaching developments,” she said. “Some who are working away very hard in their studios become rather isolated.”

Miss Kirkby-Mason has taught the piano for many years and has written 70 or 80 books for children and

adults learning the instrument. Her recital and lecture tour has already taken Miss Kirkby-Mason to India, Ceylon, Malawi, South Africa, Bermuda, Nassau, Jamaica, and New Zealand. She has visited Auckland, Wellington, and Nelson, and will go on to Australia on April 7. “I intend to spend Easter at Lake Rotorua, where 1 hope I shall hear some Maori music, and will use Christchurch as my base for a short tour round the South Island beauty spots,” she said.