Town Hall to get promotion boost

Press, 19 April 1982, Page 6

Town Hall to get promotion boost

Major J. D. Carson, who has been appointed manager of the Christchurch Town Hall, believed that its facilities should be better promoted and more intensively used. The founder and director of the New Zealand Army Band for 21 years, Major Carson, aged 47, was chosen from 38 applicants for the post and will begin duties at the Town Hall on June 1. “The Town Hall, after 10 years of teething troubles, is ready to go,” he said yesterday/J r ‘l will be looking at each of its areas—the auditorium, the James Hay Theatre, the restaurant, and the conference facilities— and will try to assess if they are as fully occupied throughout the. year as they ought to be,”,he said. He i would concentrate on running the Town Hall as a business,, making it pay its way, he said. He hoped he would not be accused of running it with military precision. He wanted to Bring the same sort of flexibility to the job that he had highlighted with the l Army Band,, he said. /White the band was un-, doubtedly, military and it always performed with tremendous precision, I like to think; that its concerts were relaxed,’’ Major Carson said. !‘I think that was why the band was so popular, though. We tried to'appeal to as wide ah audience as 'possible, and I think we~ succeeded. Often,

the band was the only con-, tact people had ever had with the Army.” Although Major Carson joined the Army in 1961 with the specific task of setting up a band, primarily to take to Malaya but later to form a Regular Force band for the whole Army, it was not until the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch in 1974 that the band had the public recognition it has since come to expect: .. From 1964, Major "Carson travelled up and down New Zealand, recruiting bandsmen. Every two years, about 22 of them would be sent off to Singapore to make up the Army band there, and Major Carson himself went to

South-East Asia twice, for two-year stints with the band.

“By 1974, we had a superb band, and were doing highcalibre marching displays and concerts round New Zealand. We were appreciated wherever we went, but it was not until the Games in 1974 that the New Zealand public as a whole became aware just how good the band was,” he said. Would he feel sad leaving the band that he had been responsible for creating? “Some aspects of Army band life I will miss very much. I . have made many friends in the band,” he said. Lieutenant Paul Milner, a Christchurch flugel horn player who has been a band member for some time, will become the new director , and conductor. He has'been assistant director for some months. Major Carson said he had sought the Town Hall post because it required the same sort of skills—management, administration, promotion, and a certain amount of prestige—that he had developed in the last 20 years. The chairman of the Town Hall board of management, Mr Hamish Hay, said that Major Carson, who has been awarded the M.B.E. for his services to_the Army Band, was chosen for the Town Hall position because of his “wealth of experience in the fields of management, entertainment, and public relations.”