Auditions, Accordions and Harp Serenades: A Musical Memoir
As a farmer’s daughter living in country Tasmania in the 1960s, there were limited opportunities for learning to play music. But all that changed when we moved to the city.
Why I joined a Recorder Ensemble
As a 60 and a bit year old single woman with a vision impairment (nothing that a pair of glasses was ever going to fix – but thanks to the folks who suggested it), I sold up in Hobart, Tasmania and moved to Melbourne, Victoria. I’ve never admitted it before, but the move was huge. […]
Elvis: the death of a King (a personal recollection)
It was mid-afternoon on Tuesday, 16 August 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis Presley was at home in his mansion at Graceland. He was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. But sleep didn’t come easily to Elvis. So he was pumped full of drugs and left alone to die. The way I see it, is that […]
Christmas Carols, COVID and Connection – December 2021
This December I gave my vocal cords a real workout. Not by talking about ‘the virus COVID 19, 20 and currently 21’ nonstop but by singing Christmas carols. As Ed Ayers from ABC Classic radio wisely said, “music is the greatest gift of all”. We all know that. During times of crisis, people everywhere in […]
I took my harp to a party ….
Today I took my harp Brandden, named after his maker, to a party. It was his first outing in over five years. I had been asked to play at a Christmas function at a palliative care home. About twenty residents attended the party in the dining room, most of whom walked in or were wheeled […]
A legally blind harpist on the healing power of music
The music had stopped. The silence was broken by the sound of an elderly woman’s voice coming from the back of the room. “That was really beautiful,” she said. She had waited for her moment and was heard by everyone in the room. The carer sitting next to the woman was overwhelmed. They were the […]
What do you turn to in times of crisis?
For most of us we turn to the arts in its various forms; music, literature, dance, digital media, the ABC … what’s left of it. In Australia, the Arts industry contributes more than $111 billion to the economy every year. But during the pandemic the industry continues to be completely disregarded when Government payments are […]
Beethoven 250 years on …
What do Beethoven and Coronavirus have in common? Well it’s not popularity or birth year. It’s isolation. People all over the world have been forced into social isolation for their own good due to Coronavirus. Now after a couple of months, we are slowly returning to a ‘new kind of normal’ which means things like social […]