Variety concert planned for Pearl Beach hall

The Pearl Beach Glee Club and Friends' Variety Concert will be held from 7:30pm on Friday, August 30, and 2:30pm on Saturday, August 31, in the Pearl Beach Memorial Hall.

The Variety Concert will include vocal and instrumental items, community singing and mini dramas.

Glee Club members will entertain with a Potted Panto - Albert (Al) Laddin and members of the Pearl Beach Youth Theatre will perform a short melodrama called Raulos the Rotter.

Varity Concert musical director Ms Diane Orton said: "This year we are featuring a number of special guest performers including local Pearl Beach Opera divas Michaele Archer and Anita Marie de Listen, cool jazz pianist Tony Doyle, well-known Central Coast lyric tenor Shane Edwards, Chinese instrumentalist Yue Davy and classical pianist Graeme Orton."

"We invite everyone to come along and re-live an era before the advent of television, video and CDs, a time when entertainment was often impromptu and always spontaneous."

Pearl Beach Progress Association president Mr Roger Murray said the Pearl Beach community was delighted to continue the long tradition of its commitment to music by presenting young performers who will sing, and play items on piano, cello and violin.

"Featuring brothers Taylor and Justin Westlake, brother and sister Anastasia and Sebastien Hibbard, Jai Harrison, Lauren Turner and recipient of the Pearl Beach 2013 Music Scholarship violinist Eva Li, you are invited to join with us in the Memorial Hall, where it all began, and have some fun," said Mr Murray.

The hall was purchased in 1943 by William Steinbeck, James Armstrong, and William Frost to give to the Pearl Beach Progress Association for the purpose of building a community meeting place.

Raising the necessary funds was a community effort and it was not until 1950 that the hall was ready for use.

Even before the hall was completed, the residents, led by Jim and Beryl Slee, were making use of it to amuse themselves with their own version of the Village Glee Club, a popular radio show at the time, with musical items, dramatic sketches and recitations.

Many of the community had no previous theatrical experience, however, at their first concert on June 11, 1950, to show off their talents and to raise further funds toward the building costs of the hall, they presented a night of musical entertainment.

The night included skits, comedy items, musical renditions and concluded with a number of popular melodies for the audience to join in.

The Glee Club and its concerts came to an end with the departure of the Slees and changing tastes in popular entertainment after the introduction of television.

In 2010 a handful of local musicians began work on a concert to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the original Glee Club.

After the success of the concert. it was decided to maintain the regular meetings around the piano.

Email, 1 Aug 2013

Lynne Lillico, Pearl Beach progress Association