I have been a professional musician my whole life. Even at 12, I was being paid to play the organ at church, and was playing weddings and funerals by the time I was 14!
I studied piano at school, and went through all the grades (up to Grade 8) while still at school. I did the Royal Schools of Music exams, which is like a UK version of AMEB).
At 17 I then successfully auditioned for Dr Hoch’s Konservatorium in Frankfurt and did a year there studying Piano (with Gottfried Bittner) and Organ (with Otto Burba) before studying music at University.
I studied Piano and Composition at Victoria University, Wellington, NZ for two years, getting an ‘A’ for piano. (it was the only A awarded in my year group.) I also achieved ATCL, Piano Perf. (Trinity College, London) in my first year of University (see my ATCL marks, here) and LTCL, Piano Perf. (Trinity College, London) in my second year. (see my LTCL marks here)
I have had many professional gigs, including – Repetiteur for the NZ Opera, Accompanist for the NZ Drama School, Accompanist for ‘Theatresports’ (including televised), touring session musician in many bands in Australia and New Zealand, ( I have toured as keyboards and backing vocals with Jon Stevens, Noiseworks II, Christine Anu, Amiel, Alex Lloyd, Shane Nicholson and many others) including internationally, many television bands from house bands to Telethons, Keyboards in the Harry M. Miller production of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ which I also conducted shows for 3 weeks when the conductor had a bereavement – this show toured for 18 months in NZ and Australia).
I left University to become part of a band who had a #1 hit single in NZ. I got the studio bug and learned arranging and producing. I honed my studio skills as a recording and mix engineer, producer, arranger and session singer and keyboard player doing ads in NZ during my 20’s.
By 30, digital recording was becoming a thing and I was on the bleeding edge and an early adopter of digital recording technology, and one of the very few women who do this (still today), that I know of, at least. I am not sure why this (still) is. But even APRA knows this is a ‘thing’ and holds regular incentives to encourage more women to also produce/use the technology.) At the time when the digital recording thing was beginning, in the late 90’s, ‘Notator Logic’, an early version of Apple’s Logic Pro X had only about 2000 users worldwide, and I was one of them. In those days, if you had a question, you would ask the developers directly using a forum. You could browse the names of the forum users and I saw only male names. Was i the only female to use this software in the world, I wondered, scanning the list for a fellow female name. Finally I found ‘Michele’ and messaged her saying ‘I think we’re the only two female uses of Notator in the entire world! Yay us!’ only to have ‘Michele’ message me back and say ‘I Am Italian Man!’ Nowadays you can learn all this stuff in person or online, but at this time because it was so new, there was really nobody to learn from, literally, apart from the music store staff who sold the software and had a chance to try it out during the day.
By the late 90’s I was sequencing on Logic (programming drums and layering keys) and recording audio (for vocals, guitars and other overdubs) on a digital 8 track, and I was able to write songs and produce full demos with a full band sound. I was writing songs with various artists including Jon Stevens who had a record deal with Columbia out of the US (Same label as Mariah Carey and Jeff Buckley, at the time!) Jon took his demos to legendary US producer Randy Jackson who was also Senior Vice President of A&R at Columbia in LA at that time (yeah, the Voice judge!) to see if he would produce. Randy loved my demos and helped me get signed. I think he ‘made a call’ or something and talked me up, which is kind of how the industry works now as well as then, and the publishing deal offers started coming in.
My lawyer Shane Simpson helped me negotiate and choose the best deal and company for me (and explain the 25 page contract!) between the four publishers who wanted to sign me, two being majors, and eventually the deal was agreed and I signed publishing with Sony/ATV in the late 90’s. It was literally a bidding war and there was a mention in Shane’s book ‘Music Business’ about this in an earlier edition.
I banked my publishing advance and Sony put me to work as a writer/producer, where I worked writing new material (demos) for various artists on the Sony roster, and also artists on other labels. Sony’s job was to place me or hook me up with other writers and artists, and then to place my material in film projects which was kind of the holy grail of earning. A few seconds of a song you wrote in the background of a scene in a movie is lucrative. Occasionally also I would get a ‘cut’ (i.e. a song I wrote made it on to an album). Notable cuts were with Joe Cocker, Stella One Eleven, Nessa Morgan, Sally Singleton, Annie Crummer, Jon Stevens, Axle Whitehead, David Campbell, Marcia Hines/The Rockmelons, TV Band Scandalous, and others. I had a top ten in France, and other bits and pieces. I wrote music for an Ad that screened in the US, and ghost-wrote (secretly!) for many top jingle houses. I even got (famous ARIA award winning artist) to play guitar on an ad for me and (famous singer) to sing a jingle for me, and (famous female artist) to sing on albums for me as a session singer, on the condition that their real names were never disclosed!
Later on I got into TV writing and wrote the theme for ‘New Macdonald’s Farm‘ and music for that series and ‘Toybox‘, did a feature film score, and incidental music for TV shows and movies, and corporate stuff. One of the jobs I did was for Qantas, remember when they had one video screen on the bulkhead and everyone watched the same movie? There was a 45 second trailer I did the music for, ‘Hans Zimmer’ style (very hollywood, bombastic, which was just what they wanted) and that ended up winning me an award (in 2004). These awards are known as ARIAs these days but in 2004 were still separated out and it was called the ‘APRA/AGSC Screen Composers Awards’ (AGSC stands for the Australian Guild of Screen Composers). Anyway, my Qantas job won the award for ‘Best Music for a Corporate or Training Video’ category. I have been a finalist a couple of other times since for other APRA awards since (various TV and ad stuff).
I also won a TUI NZ Music Award (the NZ version of the ARIA awards) for ‘Engineer of the Year’ for my engineering/studio production on ‘Love Not War’ by Annie Crummer, which incidentally was also the song that Joe Cocker cut.
I tree-changed to the Southern Highlands a few years ago after getting a bit sick of writing teenybopper love songs for wanna-be pop stars, and also sick of touring with… let’s just say ‘being trapped in a van with badly behaved blokes coming down from drugs they did the night before amongst other things they hope their girlfriends/wives will never find out about’ and that will sum it up. Also losing both parents with 18 months of each other, I was tired out and sad. After about a year of grieving at my little rented cottage at the bottom of Panorama Rd that looked out over infinite green, I was approached to start a Community Choir. This was duly named ‘Bundanoon Sings!’ and still continues today.
It was obvious that sacred choral music was my great love and passion. I used to be a Cathedral chorister at St Paul’s in Wellington, NZ, which has an EXCELLENT choir (then as now). So it was a perfect divine providence when the position became available, I applied and was successfully appointed as Director of Music at Goulburn Anglican Cathedral of St Saviour’s. My dream position!
These days I divide my time between Goulburn and Bundanoon, where I live. I am still a professional musician (I didn’t think moving here that was possible!) – but I teach piano, have the Director of Music position, am a professional accompanist (AMEB grades, concerts and recitals, Oxley and Chev HSC, etc), play the organ at the Cathedral from time to time, and do other freelancing such as the Oxley college musical, gigs, including putting on my own ‘Pop Up Piano Bar’ gigs. Three years in to teaching in the highlands I now have around 55 piano students all through word of mouth and referrals! Most students I have taken on as beginners, and my ‘first crop’ are now at Grade 7 level or higher. I am currently full, but feel free to contact me in case I get a gap. Email me or phone 0438 16 18 15
Update June 2021:
I teach most of my students during the day at 4 Colleges in the Southern Highlands, and some students come to my home after school in Bundanoon. I just finished Musical Directing the high school musical ‘Downtown’ for Chevalier College. I am playing ‘Keyboards 1’ for the HTG production of Jesus Christ Superstar in September, and I’m staging my own production of ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ in November/December.
Update June 2022:
I am teaching face to face from Bundanoon M, T, Th, F and Mittagong W. I am currently full in the after school time slot, but feel free to enquire because sometimes a spot may become available particularly if you are flexible with the time.