My Brief History in Music:
- As a teenager I discovered my love of music singing in the school choir. I had a couple of years of convent piano lessons and gave that away to teach myself guitar and piano. At the same time I became profoundly influenced by Bach, Beethoven, The Beatles, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
- Late teens, my brother Rob and I had a little garage band with friends. We particularly enjoyed singing together - Rolling Stones, Bee Gees, Beatles, The Who etc.
- At 19 I decided to take piano lessons again with a private teacher. I worked at that for a couple of years to gain entry to the Music Diploma course at Canberra School of Music (Australian National University). I won a scholarship to study composition with Larry Sitsky, and took the usual courses in harmony, orchestration etc.. Larry encouraged my interest in electronic music which led to studies at the ANUs electronic music laboratory and the opportunity for a performance at the International Society for Contemprary Music.
- In parallel I joined the all-original progressive rock band Oak playing piano and Moog synth. This led to concert gigs, ABC TV performance and then to the self published Yaraandoo vinyl album project led by Rob Thomsett.
- As a result of working with Rob, my primary interest in music moved towards fusion, and from there into mainstream Jazz, with Miles Davis as a centre point - all his associates over the years providing a wealth of listening and learning.
- Marriage and children came my way. Music became a background interest that I maintained on and off as I focused on a career in software development and technology management. With my wife Annie, a wonderful singer, I worked in various pop/rock and country bands over the years, enjoying a rather adventurous musical world tour as we lived and worked around Australia, PNG, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
- After our world travels we settled in Gippsland and had a great little country rhythm and blues band, Obliqua, which mainly played community gigs and local festivals, with the highlights of supporting Harry Manx and James Reyne, and being featured on the Gippsland Uncovered CD project sponsored by the Lyrebird Arts Council and the local shires.
- Throughout I have sustained my interest in the musicianship aspect of music, fascinated by the wonderful language of chords, scales and musical structures across popular music forms, jazz and classical music. Playing guitar and piano, each instrument tends to reveal different aspects of how our minds work with music.
- I am now finished with the corporate IT life and focused full time on music teaching and performance, with music teaching engagements at Wonthaggi Community VCAL and Bass Valley Primary School as well as teaching privately.
- As a performer, singing and working on piano and guitar, my philosophy is to play the music I love and trust that will communicate to the audience. I lead the Beatroot Jam duo, singing and playing playing a diverse collection of pop/rock/country/blues music, and have a solo repertoire which is more jazz/blues focused. I love the opportunity to work on acoustic and electronic instruments with both guitar and piano. And I love to sing, by myself or in harmony with others.
- In the background I have started writing music again, mainly in the jazz/fusion mode, and with that I am beginning to get involved again in electronic music and current state technology for creating and capturing music. A life in music is so much fun!