Modern minstrels at Darfield

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33641, 17 September 1974, Page 10

Modern minstrels at Darfield

Julie Felix, who toured New Zealand last year with the David Frost Show, will be back in Christchurch this week with her own show. She will give a concert in the Town Hall on Sunday. Her accompanist will be Peter Berryman (guitar), and the first half of the show will feature John Hanlon, a R.A.T.A. award winner. The show has already been to several North Island centres, and on Thursday will be presented in the Regent Theatre, Hokitika. Next Monday Timaru concert-goers will be able to see it in the Timaru Theatre Royal.

Robert and Andrea Oliver, the two Wellington musicians whose television programme, “Pleasure’s Reward,” was screened nationally in August, will give a concert at Darfield High School next Tuesday.

This concert is one in the series organised by the Music Federation with the sponsorship of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the Todd Foundation. The music the Olivers will play is drawn from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and they perform it in the way it would have been heard at private evenings in the palates and great houses of the times.

the idea of the type of programme they will present at Darfield. The tour of the Olivers is like a modern version of the wandering minstrels. They are travelling with two of their three children, Mrs Oliver’s 7ft 6in harpsichord, and all their other instruments and music.

The Olivers are a husband and wife team. Robert Oliver plays the bass viol, sings, and reads writings and poetry from the period. Andrea Oliver plays the harpsichord and the oboe. Originally a member of the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra, Mrs Oliver studied harpsichord and oboe in England. Mr Oliver also studied overseas, and it was while they were returning to New Zealand that they developed