I really enjoy teaching my handful of students. They're all dedicated and fun to work with and range in age from 16 to 89. The youngest of them gave a lovely card and Christmas present and I'm pretty chuffed to read her words of appreciation. It's pretty special to be able to share my love
I had a conversation today with a student and her mum about Mozart. I finished with an off-hand remark that it's been a long time since I played Mozart and I might do that a little later. Mum replied that it's a pretty special skill to have. It was a lovely reminder that it is
You can't but love a 1950s record sleeve with bright colours and cartoon dancers. I don't listen to it often, but I love it sitting there on the shelf promising waltzing good times.
Is this not a heavenly combination? A stage full of music and fine food and drinks. The Kingston Food & Wine Festival had all the right ingredients today, including sunshine, and I got to do two of my favourite things - play music and talk about great produce.
The rest of the country spent the afternoon watching a bunch of blokes kick a football around a field this afternoon. The only. balls I was watching were the ones on the ends of my bass strings. I'm learning to bow and those big, fat bass frequencies are the audiological equivalent of sticky date pudding
You can sit around waiting for inspiration to strike, or you can look a song straight in the eye and work on it. I quite enjoyed the word association exercise I did this week and it resulted in a song. In the end I didn't use a lot of the words on the list, but
There's something really nice about forgetting that you met a wonderful musician and then remembering again at the perfect moment. I crossed paths with Icelandic singer-songwriter, Svavar Knutur, at the National Folk Festival this Easter. He came up in conversation tonight and I've been smoothing the bumps in my heart with his beautiful music for
I have a piano student on Thursday mornings who is an absolute joy to teach. He's interested and enthusiastic and we have really good discussions about how music works. And that dynamic makes me a better teacher. The photo below is a teaching idea I am thrilled to have come up with last week. It
I love old songs, especially when they pop up according to what I'm working on. This one landed on my radar in the middle of making a costume for some events about Mrs Muller, the 19th century Umbrella Maker of Ballarat. The Umbrella Man was written in 1924, but not recorded until 1939. It's a
It's not often you get multiple double basses in a room. More often than not one is sufficient. So it's a treat to park Antoinette with a group of similar beauties. Rumour has it they might all meet up for a big, fat bass session tonight. Bass nap time
