JANUARY 1955 THE CHRISTMAS DINNER AND FESTIVAL ...

___rllMr. Stewart said he was paying special attention at the Peabody Institute4 to chamber music and to providing facilities for amateurs to get together to playquartets.Among the many striking costumes we noted the special respsendence of thatworn by Healey Willan. We understand it was his own composition; in modo antico,we suppose.FORTHCOMING DATESThe January and February dinners will be held on the last Saturday ofeach month - January 29th, and February 26th.DR.A. Y. JACKSON LEAVING TORONTOWe learn that Dr. Jackson is giving up his Severn Street studio and willlive and paint at Manotick, about fifteen miles from Ottawa. Here he will becloser to the scenes which he so loves to put on canvas. We are sorry we shallnot see him so often at the Club but wish him all happiness in the change.Paul Hahn recently had at the Club a guest, Mr. Walter Ideler fromHamburg, Germany. Mr. Ideler is a musician and composer and we welcome him toCanada.The Christmas Season is perhaps the busiest of the year for professionalmusicians. So many musical events took place in vwhich our members were concernedthat it would be impossible to detail them here. We should like, however, to referto a new work by Vaughan Williams, a Christmas Cantata "This Day". This wasgiven what was believed to be its first performance in North America by the Choirof the Metropolitan Church, directed by John Sidgwick with Gerald Bales at theorgan. The work was first given at the Three Choirs Festival, Worcester, Englandlast September.We must refer, too, to the annual Christmas presentation of Canon Ward's"Christmas Story", directed again by George Coutts, who is also responsible forsome of the musical settings.Wie are sure that members with a liking for chamber music will join thewriter in thanking the CBC for broadcasting a fairly liberal quantity of such musicat the present time. John Reeves, the CBC producer of the series, recently publishedin the CBC Times an interesting article entitled "The Friendly Art" fromwhich we quote: "I hope . . the series . . will be illuminating and encouragingfor the enthusiastic amateurs who delight in getting together to play, howeverbadly; these people are the very backbone of music. In a society which watchesbaseball instead of playing it, which supplants the vegetable patch with the groceteriaand has almost wholly abandoned conversation, our approach to the arts isbecoming dangerously passive. Time was when any educated man could read a score;perhaps we haven't progressed as far as we thought. Meanwhile it may not be entirelywise to take your fbur-year-old daughter to a concert of adult music - but