Making music together

Clucking chickens, giant spiders and hissing snakes (both the animal and the human kind) were the backdrop of my musical upbringing in Tasmania, Australia. Music was – and is – a visceral expulsion of my soul through sound; it was my voice when I didn’t have one. The notion of composers, of phrasing, of adhering to dynamics, were all secondary to me. I wanted, nay, needed to create something of my own, even if it, at times, contradicted what was written in the score. As you can imagine, this naive enthusiasm for creation was not taken well by many of the professors I encountered over the years…