Resident of Yarraville, horn player, band nerd, music publisher & dog lover.
Music is my life
I emigrated from Bristol, England to Perth, Western Australia at the age of eight, after my parents decided we needed a change in lifestyle. As a kid, I was always a bit of a head-in-the-clouds daydreamer. I loved dinosaurs, and all through my childhood wanted to be a paleontologist. I rode my bike everywhere and was always playing the latest video game on my Sega Mega Drive.
From an early age, I have always had an interest in music, which probably came from my grandfather who was a jazz pianist. I used to sit at my tiny kid-sized piano and ‘work out’ songs I heard on the radio. So, at age 10 my parents decided to buy me a real piano and sent me to music lessons.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take too well to being taught piano, and stopped after 10 lessons! Instead, I took up the clarinet which was available to learn at school. This was an instrument I instantly took a liking too, and I even practised it without the usual bribes of video games and chocolate. You might then imagine my distress when the prestigious Perth Modern music school offered a music scholarship… on the French horn!
At the time, I had no idea what a French horn was. In some respect, it’s the complete opposite of a clarinet. Horns are made out of brass while clarinets out of wood. Horns have three keys while clarinets have many. With the horn, you have to buzz each note while clarinets have reeds.
I was very nervous about starting high school on this instrument I had no idea about. However, such opportunities should not be dismissed, so I accepted the scholarship, which has been one of the best decisions in my life.
During high school, I was completely immersed in music. I sang in all the school choirs, played in all the wind bands and also played in the school orchestra. This was all on top of my normal school work and practice. It was exhausting but set the standard for what my life would become.
In my final year, I took part the school’s music tour of Europe. This was a real eye-opener and concreted the fact that music was going to be my future. The highlight of the tour was our chorale receiving first place in the International Music Competition in Vienna.
If all this banding, singing and playing wasn’t enough, I had a massive interest in musicals and opera. I would spend my Saturday afternoons in the music department of the State Library listening to musicals, followed by the score. Yes, I was THAT kind of nerd. This prompted me to compose a short Gibert and Sullivan-style operetta based on ‘Sleeping Beauty’.
I rallied my friends and managed to put on a performance of this work at a school variety concert, which received much acclaim. I now knew what I wanted to do – write opera and musicals. So, when I went to university, I decided to study composition as well as the horn.
In my third year of university, I attended a composition workshop with the Song Company in Sydney. This was my first time in the Eastern states, and for a smalltown Perth boy, there was so much more going on there. This ignited a desire to explore the East. After I graduated in 2004, I came to Melbourne for a holiday, with the desire to spend six months here at most. Within a couple of days, I decided that this was the city for me. I never went back!
I first settled in Brunswick East and immediately joined the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic choir. This introduced me to a lot of musicians, many of which I still work with today. The choir also commissioned several pieces from me, which established me as a composer in the Melbourne music scene.
After a few years, I decided to further my study and completed a Master of Music Composition at Melbourne University. This gave me the opportunity to work with organisations such as The Australian Children’s Choir and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
After completing my Master degree, I decided to switch my focus to writing music specifically for theatre. Initially, I worked with an independent theatre company Dancing with Strangers on a production of ‘Hamlet’ which led me into productions of ‘The Crucible’, ’1984’ and ‘The Trial of Adolph Eichmann’. With Eagles Nest Theatre. I also did a show with A is For Atlas where I played my horn in duet with an actor.
In 2010, I wrote a cabaret for Short and Sweet festival entitled ‘Confessions of a Pantomime Horse (Rear)’ with lyricist Dan Christie, who is a local westie himself. This inspired us to start up our own boutique opera company The Beggars Opera Co-operative (Beg Op Co Op), staging original opera-inspired work in unique performance settings.
Our company recently produced a cycle of sea shanties in a shipping container – ‘Songs of the Sea’, and we’re finalising our first major opera ‘Seduction and Demise in East in Berlin’. On top of all this, we’re also developing a new show called ‘A Cabinet de Curios’, a collection of new and old work set in ‘Museum of Curiosities’. We currently exploring venues in the west where we can stage this performance later in the year.
Discovering the bands
In 2012, my partner Jonny and I were living in a tiny apartment Richmond, but we had a strong desire to get a dog. As circumstance had it, my friends from Footscray were going overseas for a year, and the opportunity came up for us to rent their house. We got Baron the Bassett hound almost immediately! It was a great spot to move to, and it gave us the opportunity to save for a place as well.
Our friends came back after a year, and we had just enough money to buy a house. We loved living in the west and started looking for houses in West Footscray and Yarraville. After a few months, we both fell in love with a place in Yarraville.
‘We could never afford this,’ I said, ‘It’s much too pretty.’
Lucky for us, the auction was on State Election Day in 2014, and no one turned up for it. We had attended the auction to watch, but the house was passed in. We made an offer and snapped it up there and then!
Soon after we moved into Yarraville, I approached the Footscray Yarraville City Band (affectionately known as Scraggers) to see if they needed a French horn player. Unknown to me at that time, brass bands don’t traditionally have French horns in them. They suggested that I should go play withWestern Brass, their sister band.
On my first rehearsal with Western I was given a tenor horn to play, which is similar to a French horn, only it’s not! It was almost like learning a new instrument all over again. I took to it pretty quickly and within a couple of weeks I was playing with them in a band contest in Traralgon. Amazingly, we won. 
Western Brass is incredibly welcoming and encourages a lot of younger players, as well as musicians who want to try their hand at a second (or third) instrument. There is a great community focus of the band, performing locally at events such as the Yarraville Festival, the night markets at Footscray train station as well as performing an annual concert at the Williamstown rotunda.
Through some hard work (and a lot of practice), I worked my way up through Western Brass (which is a C-grade band) to play in Footscray-Yarraville City band (which is A-grade).
There is quite a difference between the difficulty in music between the bands and therefore the commitment is greater.
Footscray-Yarraville City band is a hard-working band, performing quite frequently throughout the year.
You may have heard them as you sing carols in the Yarraville Gardens at Christmas time, or heard a cornet or two play the Western Bulldogs theme song as you walk into Whitten Oval. They perform regularly at Federation Square with the Choir of Hard Knocks and last year the won the State band championships. Recently we have released a new album called ‘The Endless Silence’.
In November the Footscray-Yarraville City band will be touring France, Belgium and the UK for two-and-a-half weeks to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice of the First World War. We will be touring our ‘The Silent ANZAC’ program, conceived by the band’s Musical Director Phillipa Edwards and Principal cornet Jamie Lawson. ‘The Silent ANZAC’ intertwines the story of the Australian submarine, the AE2, with other stories of love and loss from The Great War.
We will also be performing at the ‘Last Post Ceremony’ at Menin Gate, which will be live-streamed back to Australia.
Additionally, in 2013 the band discovered an old First World War rope-tensioned bass drum in our band room. Etched inside the drum were the names of five soldiers together with their enlistment numbers. Further research revealed that the drum was used by our Anzac troops on the training grounds at Sutton-Veny on the Salisbury Plains in the UK before the departed for the Western Front. The present band members want to share the history and story of this drum with the wider community.
Being in a brass band is like being part of a big family. We are a motley crew from all walks of life, but you can rest assured that anyone would do anything for you.
Band members sacrifice a lot of their social life and give their time to practice for rehearsals and performances. I’m barely home, and I’m thankful to Jonny, who understands what I do.
Currently, I work in the publishing department of the Australian Music Examination Board. Basically, I make (typeset, edit, design) music books for people who are learning music. I enjoy this role as it involves me being highly creative and allows me to continue my artistic pursuits.
I have got two dogs – Baron the basset hound who I have mentioned before, and Rogue, a bloodhound who was rescued from Geelong Animal Shelter. They are lovable hounds whose noses always get them into trouble. We love how dog-friendly Yarraville is. There is a wealth of great dog parks and we love taking the dogs out for a coffee in the Village. In fact, we take them everywhere, even to our gym!
I’ve lived in many different parts of Australia and Melbourne, but Yarraville really does feel like home. I love the sense of community and I am very happy putting my roots down here.”
