About

Musician

It probably all began with my parent’s ten piece bush band. With foot stomping, dosey-doeing and fast fiddle licks part of every weekend, music seemed like the most exciting thing in the world to me.

I grew up in Picola, a small country town of a hundred people. Dad was the singing shearer and Mum was a primary school music teacher.  I was lucky to have a top notch violin teacher, Mrs Hodge who lived close by. It’s rare to find a violin teacher of her quality in a rural area so she had many students including some who would travel up to two hours for lessons. She had high expectations and was always looking for ways to improve her teaching, including getting her first computer at age sixty and informing me about this thing called “Youtube”. I had a violin lesson every Monday at her house from age eight to eighteen. It wasn’t all about the music; she gave me all sorts of advice about life over cake and tea before getting stuck into some Bach.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             I fell in love with the violin when I went to Border Music Camp and discovered gypsy music for the first time. The year after that I joined the jazz improvisation group at camp and discovered I didn’t just have to play what was on the page, I create music as I went along. At about the same age I was attempting to sing and play violin at the same time so my parents bought me a guitar to remedy this situation. Song writing soon followed.

During late high school my brother and I got hired to play once a week at the retirement home. Every week we would play different genres and though often half the audience would be asleep never have I felt more appreciated in my life, we weren’t just playing music to them, they would be sharing stories with us.

As a result I believe in learning your instrument so it can become yours to create with. I have seen the power of music reach all ages and I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life.

Educator

“Never become a teacher”, my Mum, a teacher, would implore growing up. At other times she would tell me that I would make a good teacher. I have resisted following in my mother’s footsteps for as long as I could but now I have to admit that teaching is something that excites me and fires up my creativity. I’m interested in people and passionate about music and believe that it can transform lives.

I know it can sound like naive idealism, believing education can help solve many of the  problems in society. But I find this belief motivating. The idea of education as an agent of chance first dawned on me was when I was watching ‘The Magnificent Seven’ with my family after my last VCE exam. I said to Mum, “I like it how the cowboys didn’t just save the village but taught the villagers how to shoot guns and save themselves” and she said, “Look! You’re thinking like an educator!” So I see a life of music as not just playing music and giving people beautiful but fleeting musical experiences but also teaching; giving people musical tools they can take away with them and create with their whole lives.