Recollections
of my father’s many years of involvement with the ABC Orchestras.
“Jack” Thomas left his home town of Broken Hill at the age of
seven to study the violin at the Elder Conservatorium and began his long musical
career at the age of twelve, playing in theatre orchestras during the days of
silent pictures.
In the mid-twenties, after playing in everything from
vaudeville to Grand Opera, the advent of the “talkies” found him, together with
many other musicians, temporarily out of work. Fortune stepped in and his long
association with the conductor William (Bill) Cade (including playing for the Melbourne Regent Theatre
Orchestra), and a crash course on his second instrument, the viola, led him
in 1937 to the position of Principal Viola in the recently formed ABC Studio Orchestra.
The formation of a permanent Symphony Orchestra in the late
1940s found Jack leaving the viola section and assuming the new full time
position of Orchestral Manager and Librarian (a job he had undertaken
previously together with his orchestral duties).
Jack was a talented musical arranger and orchestrator and
besides arranging scores for the full Symphony Orchestra he also both arranged
and participated in many “light” music performances such as “Melody Land ” from
the Regent Theatre, with Tom King on the Mighty Wurlitzer, Richard (Dick) Smith
on percussion / xylophone and “Moods and Melodies” from the ABC Studios.
During the Second World War Jack took on the additional duty
of being in charge of troop entertainment in South Australia and concerts given
both at various Army establishments and at the “Cheer-Up Hut” in Adelaide were
a source of great satisfaction to him,
Jack was instrumental in the creation of taking orchestral
music to many country centres throughout the State. Over his years with the ABC
he enjoyed the friendship of many overseas visiting artists and conductors.
Jack retired from the ABC in the early 1970s due to ill health
and eventually passed away in May 1976.
David Thomas
9/10/2009
