BY DAVID URQUHART-JONES
I SPENT SIX YEARS in what was then ‘the Territory’, during which time I founded a choir, an orchestra, and the Port Moresby Junior Music School, which served both the indigenous and expatriate communities.
The choir and orchestra performed major choral works and, on one occasion, flew to Madang and performed Messiah in an old aircraft hangar. Jim Griffin, the noted academic whose obituary has appeared in PNG Attitude, was the tenor soloist.
The music school, supported by Director of Education Ken McKinnon and the Administrator's wife, Dulcie Johnston, provided a complete program of studies every Saturday morning. One of the children attending is now principal cellist with the Tasmanian Symphony orchestra.
The Port Moresby orchestra, augmented by musicians from the RPNGC (Police) Band accompanied the first performance of an opera in PNG - HMS Pinafore. Both cast and orchestra included local and expatriate members.
We hired two DC3 aircraft to transport choir and orchestra to Madang, where we were to perform Messiah, and, on the night of arrival, a chamber concert.
Unfortunately some of our baggage, including formal dress for the performances, was offloaded at Lae, and we had to make do with borrowed shirts and socks. The decision to do the whole formal bit with black tie and black dresses had been resisted by Jim Griffin who, as it turned out, did not know that the arrival of most of the formal gear had been delayed.
He turned up dutifully for the chamber concert in a hunting pink evening jacket - the only one he could find. Seeing our motley attire, he thought we had played a trick on him and was furious. Being a very good natured bloke, however, he turned on a fine performance for that concert and for Messiah the next day. Jim was a fine musician and went on to participate in many of our concerts.
The district commissioner had earlier sent a LandRover round the district announcing that the bigpela singsing, the Messiah, was coming. It turned out to be a superb promotional wheeze. Thousand of locals trekked in from the bush relieved to find that, at last, Jesus had arrived. What a wonderful audience they turned out to be.
The police band had been trained by Inspector Tom Shacklady to very high levels of musical performance. Tom could never stop swearing (Tourette's syndrome) and did so freely, no matter how august the company. He gave me some help and a book on principles of brass instrument performance.
My first year was spent at Sogeri High School, where there was a cadet unit. The house to which I was assigned had been an army hospital during World War II and the army had left behind some brass instruments. I used Tom's book to instruct a number of students in the art of getting musical sounds from cornets, trumpets, a flügel horn, a small bore trombone and an E flat tuba.
Within less that a year they were playing at football matches in Moresby. I was a wind player myself but being an expert on the bagpipes was not much help in getting a brass band together.
Bagpipes were very popular among the locals. I remember when I first played them on the Oval at Sogeri. Boys jumped over walls and rushed to find out what the noise was about. Then they fell in behind me as I marched, like the pied piper, around the Oval. The boys were soon joined by girls from the local village who shrieked with pleasure as they joined the marchers.
On another occasion I was playing my pipes at a singsing in a village near Moresby when a painted warrior thrust his face into mine saying 'Booti-ful, booti-ful'. I thought he was saying 'bloody fool' and stopped playing. However he was actually saying 'beautiful', so I started again and he pranced along in my wake.
Another unforgettable moment occurred during the performance of Pinafore. One of the songs has the words '...for he is an Englishman'. The eyes of my student singer, Jonbili Tokome, from Buka, sparkled with mirth as he joined gleefully in the chorus. At the end of the first performance the Administrator, who was in attendance, got up and made a speech in which he noted the first performance of an opera in PNG.
A concert tour with the Australian violinist, Ronald Woodcock, was also not without its adventures. We performed in the golf club in Lae. The bar at the far end of our concert room remained open during the performance and a lighting man from the local dramatic society assisted by shining a spotlight in our faces.
Realising that we looked worried, he then turned on a fan which blew the music of the stands. We managed - including the copious number of SP stubbies we were offered afterwards.
I am greatly indebted to my patrons Dulcie Johnson and Ken McKinnon, as well as to the many fine musicians who gave their time freely and generously to providing instruction and performances in the projects that I fostered during the six years I was privileged to serve in PNG.
David Urquhart-Jones, who now lives in Victoria, has played double bass in England; conducted orchestral concerts in the United States; played jazz piano on a river boat; and performed internationally as an accompanist and in chamber ensembles. He is now distilling his experiences in compositions which reflect his many faceted musical career.
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