Members of the Bay of Islands Singers rehearsing for the “cracker” performance. Back row from left: Yvonne Hooper, Sasha Jubb, Nikki Naude and Jane Jackets; front row from left: Jeff Garnham, John Sexton and Paul Sutton.
Bay of Islands Singers offering a treat
An end-of-the-year recital from the Bay of Islands Singers promises to be a “cracker” of a concert.
The choir, conducted by John Jackets, has soloists Henrietta Reid (soprano),
Michael Burch (tenor) and Jarvis Dams (baritone). They will perform some firm favourites and some seasonal numbers, as well as less familiar pieces and with a live guest orchestra.
The concert, on Sunday, November 26, will hear the choir sing works ranging from the glories of Gabrieli to the flair of My Fair Lady.
One piece is Come, Christmas Child, a New Zealand Mass, which was composed by Michael Bell, who has played the organ for the singers for a number of years. This will be the first public appearance of the work, a world premiere indeed!
Bell is currently sharing organ duties at St Luke’s Presbyterian Church in Auckland and is resident organist and music teacher at Kings School in Remuera. He said of Come, Christmas Child:
“Towards the end of 2020 I wrote to my uncle, John Thornley, who has had a long involvement in Christian texts by New Zealand authors, with a view to composing a Christmas Mass.
“He sent me the poem Nativity by Joy Cowley and also suggested texts from Shirley Murray and those with works in the album Carol Our Christmas and the piece was completed around August of the following year.”
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As a composer, he has recently finished a collection of piano pieces and is presently working on his third symphony. His setting of Katherine Mansfield’s poem To L.B.H recently premiered in Wellington.
The concert is to be held at the Turner Centre at Kerikeri on Sunday, November 26 at 2.30. Tickets are $40 for adults, $15 for 18 and under, and free for Community Services Card holders. Tickets are available from the Turner Centre or iTicket.
Public demand inspires second print run of memoir
Haruru Falls community stalwart, the late Maureen Yorke, lives again in a reprint of her popular publication, Barbed Wire on the Beaches.
The first copies of her childhood memories of World War II’s impact on the Bay of Islands sold out when it was published in 2011.
Publisher Fiona Craig said when she received a recent email requesting further copies of the book, she decided on the reprint. It is the only book she has had so many requests for 12 years after it was released.
Maureen died in December 2020 and permission was sought from her family to undertake the reprint. They consented and proceeds from book sales will go to Alzheimers Northland. The Bay of Islands and Whangaroa Community Board provided a grant to fund the second print run.
Barbed Wire on the Beaches is a lively social history of New Zealand Army and Air Force wartime manoeuvres from Kawakawa to Waipapakauri and places in between during World War II.
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It’s not hard to visualise the Saturday night Kawakawa bob hops Maureen was allowed to attend when she turned 16 years old. She was permitted to wear a suggestion of Tangee lipstick, over which she applied Vaseline to the bottom lip.
“This gave a pouty, dewy look that film stars all seemed to have.”
When US servicemen came to Kawakawa they taught Maureen and her friends the jitterbug at the bob hops. It was a time of circular skirts and full petticoats, so the young women would whirl and turn and be thrown around with abandon.
When one of the mothers chaperoning at the hop broadcast her indignation that the girls were showing their underwear, Maureen’s mother turned old theatre curtains into rompers for the girls to wear under their dance skirts.
Maureen also published a book of songs and music brought to New Zealand by some of the first Bohemian immigrants in the 1860s. The Eastern European newcomers had built a life around the Puhoi River.
Maureen grew up with Bohemian music and played and performed with the button accordion all her life. Her book of songs, titled Papa’s Melodies, found its way to a group of Egerlanders now living in Germany who are reviving old Bohemian traditions.
Silent auction for artwork
A painting by Nicky Broekhuysen, a New Zealand artist currently living in France, is hanging in The Duke of Marlborough Hotel conference room in Russell.
It is there anticipating a silent auction which will raise funds for the Russell Tennis Club in support of funds to build a clubhouse.
The painting was gifted by her to the artist’s parents, Sharon and Paul Broekhuysen, who in turn have bequeathed it to the tennis club.
Nicky Broekhuysen was born in South Africa and eventually made her way to Auckland with her parents. She is a graduate of the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts.
Her work has been exhibited widely in galleries, institutions and art fairs throughout Europe and she has been commissioned by a gallery in New York, as well as accepting individual commissions.
For the past 17 years she has led a somewhat peripatetic lifestyle, moving from Auckland to Shanghai and then to Berlin. From there she moved to France and for the past four years has lived near the mountains in Haute Pyrénées, a department in the region of Occitania, southwest France.
The painting being auctioned is titled Yesterday’s Clouds 1 and uses two simple binary forms, the line (1) and the circle (0). These two forms have become her distinctive visual and conceptual trademark as she explores themes such as time, ancestry, belief and belonging.
She is arriving back in New Zealand on December 6 to visit her parents. She will give a talk at The Duke of Marlborough on the painting and her artwork in general and how it connects to nature and the universe.
Her mother says they will sell the painting “for what we feel is the right price” sometime after December 6.
For more information visit: nickybroekhuysen.com
