Meeting on orchestra?

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33655, 3 October 1974, Page 1

Meeting on orchestra?

A special general meeting of the Christchurch Civic Orchestra Foundation may be held after the local body elections.

The foundation’s president (Mr N. G. Pickering) said last evening that he would discuss the question of calling a special meeting when he met representatives of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council tomorrow.

Such a meeting has been called for by a number of the orchestra’s subscribers who are at odds with the actions of some members of the foundation’s board of management.

Mr Pickering, as Mayor of Christchurch, with Mr D. B. Rich, chairman of the Waimairi County Council,

and Mr R. W. J. Harrington, Mayor of Riccarton, will tomorrow have a lunch-time meeting with four members of the arts council. “I shall put it to them that I would be prepared to call a special meeting after the election,” said Mr Pickering. “I think, myself, that some good could come out of it,” he said.

Mr Pickering would ordinarily remain president of the foundation until next March. He said last evening that he did not think his role in calling a meeting would be affected by the election result. “But I am not going into a meeting confronted by a list of questions supplied in advance,” he said. “I would first state the case for the group on the board who are with me.”

On the possible value of

such a meeting, Mr Pickering said that he and the chairman of the board of management (Mr R. D. Monk) had tried at least three times in August to approach the members of the orchestra, but the opportunity had been denied them. "A number of players have come to me individually and have said that they do not agree with what has been going on,” said Mr Pickering. “Some candidates for the local-body elections — not just those of my own political persuasion — are not at all happy about a circular and questionnaire sent to candidates.”

The circular, which in two foolscape pages offers a version of the present dispute and questions Mr Pickering’s conduct in it, has been sent

to all candidates for the localbody elections. It is the first effort by anyone to make the orchestra dispute into an election issue. It was sent out by two orchestra subscribers, Messrs T. W. Turner and T. A. Mitchell.

It asks the candidates: "If elected will you vote, to withdraw your council’s grant to the orchestra if the members of the foundation continue to oppose Mr Pickering?” Last week, the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council froze the rest of its $30,000 contribution for this year (it had already paid about $11,000). A spokesman for the dissidents, Mr G. A. Hay, yesterday asked the Minister of Internal Affairs (Mr May) to set up a “fair and independent” authority to hear the views of both parties.