Relative importance

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 16

Relative importance

The Scottish singer, Kenneth McKellar, will divide his three-day stay in Christchurch between the stage and his relatives. He said after his arrival in Christchurch yesterday that he had 50 or 60 first and second cousins to visit. How to fit everything in seemed to perplex him.

The singer is half-way through one of his annual tours. He has spent three weeks in Australia, and opened his New Zealand tour in Wellington on Saturday night.

Typically, the first half of his Christchurch programme will be selected from classical opera, and the second half from traditional Scottish ballads and folk songs. I Mr McKellar said that he enjoyed being in New Zealand. “I always feel I’m half-way home when I’m here,” he said. “The pace is what I like, the people are kind, and parts of the South Island are quite like Scotland.”

He had left his family in the village of Lenzie — his home for the last 18 years. It has a population of about 4000, and is about 10 miles from Glasgow.

He had no idea what the townspeople thought of having an international celebrity in their midst. Whatever they thought, the town was still a haven of quiet for brief periods after long taxing rehearsals for television and radio appearances.

The hardest audience to play to was a television audience. There was no communication, except through a lens. In a live show, rapport could be established quickly, and the singer could adjust to his audience. With a live audience, he did not set out to create a stage image, nor did he like |to put on his kilt and lean on the nostalgia that was associated with romantic Scotland.

He believed in professional excellence and a wide repertoire, and had not come 16,000 miles to croon sentimental Scottish ballads. However, as a Scottish tenor

he was raised on the traditional songs of Scotland, and enjoyed singing them immensely, he said.

He classed himself as one of those people who enjoyed his job, and was impatient at the question of hobbies.

“People must be discontented if they are always going off to do hobbies. 1 happen to enjoy what I do most of the time. On occasions, though, I do a bit of cooking, play a bit of golf and do some reading. He not only reads, but writes. In 1972 he wrote his first book, “The Romantic Scotland of Kenneth McKellar,” in response to large numbers of letters asking him to explain the origins of the more popular Scottish songs.

At the beginning of this year, he became a working director of a commercial radio station, Radio Clyde.

Vice-president. — Mr D. Sawkins, of Green Island, Dunedin, was one of 16 vicepresidents elected for 1975 at the intematiqnal Jaycees congress at Auckland.-—(P.A.)