Music Festival

Te Ao Hou, December 1956, Page 48

Music Festival ((continued from p. 30) of volume and tempo. There were the funny moments like that which occurred during the American sea shanty, ‘Blow the Cotton Down!’ ‘For the chorus I want every bit of tone you've got,’ said the conductor, and then, ‘No! no! still not loud enough … much more!’ But he didn't bargain on getting the response he did, a roaring out-of-tune chorus which would better have graced a goal at a Test match. But it was all fun. The youngsters sang with a will, delighting to watch and take their interpretation from the conductor's hands. So passed a day of hard work, when young announcers tried out their skill at speaking in public, when song dance and percussion filled the air with live and varied sound, and the stage with rhythmic movement. Processes of trial and error were checked from time to time with ‘playbacks’ on the tape-recorders. The following day I visited separate schools, rehearsed some small points, watched with interest the boys of Minginui Maori School working at their traditional Maori carvings, heads, gate-posts and lintels, in a communal effort to adorn the school grounds. Finally the evening came, and with it that asmosphere of tension and thrills which only comes when you have a real audience to perform to. As so often happens the loud-speaker system burnt out a few moments before eight o'clock and a few seconds later the tape recorded went ‘haywire’ and a mass of tape festooned itself like spaghetti on the top of the spool. But who cared … the announcers used their own voices well enough and a new tape

was deftly fitted on the machine. The massed choir sang ‘God Defend New Zealand’ and the First Festival was under way with nearly a hundred throats giving their best and most musical utterance. After weeks of preparation and effort … the concert had begun. Next morning the Festival was already a memory, though a vivid one, and the children were all skipping about in the newest excitement … the large soft snowflakes that were falling. Later they were to hear themselves singing from 1YZ as they had earlier heard the Auckland Festival. All concerned, teachers and children had the experience now behind them which would enable them confidently to go on to a yet better Festival in 1957.