By Sears Eldredge

Denis East

On Tuesday, 29 September at Roberts Hospital, Huxtable was able to see a performance by the “Changi Celebrity Artists” in the Officers’ Ward:

Dennis East and Coles played violin and accordion.^[1] George Wall and Aubrey King sang. Fowler and one other masqueraded in women’s clothes, a delightful skit.

Afterwards, East told me about a concert tonight over at Selarang, so at 7 p.m. I met the Windmill Theatre troupe at our gate and marched with them to Selarang. Padre Haig led us and there were about 50 present, including the choir and a few hangers-on. The concert was held in the very pleasant hall, with platform, at the Convalescent Depot. . ..  Dennis East played a Mendelsohn concerto that lasted about 25 minutes. When I asked him on the way home how they had the music for the piano accompaniment he told me that they had written the whole arrangement from gramophone records which they had managed to obtain during their imprisonment!^[i]

Reginald Renison

In the 18^th Div. Area., the brilliant O.R. pianist, Reginald Renison, had started to organize a Symphony Orchestra composed mainly of officers.

“I remember going with him to a rehearsal,” [wrote his friend Fergus Anckorn]. “When he walked into the room, nothing much happened. He tapped the music stand with his bamboo baton and got silence. He then addressed the officers saying, “Gentlemen, I am sure you must be aware that the protocol is that when the conductor enters, the orchestra rises to its feet”. He then walked out, and re-entered, when they rose to their feet as one.”^[ii]

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[1] A sketch by Ronald Searle of East playing the violin was not made available for this blog. East had lost his original violin in the Battle for Singapore. But he and a friend constructed a new one out of various pieces of wood found in Changi.

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[i] Huxtable, 81.

[ii] Anckorn, F. Letter, 17 July 2000.

Note that all the documents in this series of blogs reside in Sears A. Eldredge Archive in the De Witt Wallace Library at Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55105

Sear’s book, Captive Audiences/Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945, was published by Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014, as an open-access e-book and is available here: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks/22