…inasmuch as my family arrived in Sydney on the SS Orion fifty years ago today, after a six week voyage from England that included Gibraltar, Naples, Port Said, Aden (through the Suez Canal), Colombo, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and finally Sydney. Today is also the traditional Guy Fawkes’ day in England – I’m not sure that the two events are related in any way.
I remember my first day in Sydney, walking across Glebe Island bridge when it still had traffic on it, and wondering what all the strange cars were (they were called Holden, actually). It was a few months later having settled into our home at Cronulla when I started learning piano – my first piano was an old upright which we brought out from England with us because we couldn’t sell it, and was placed strategically in our garage so that no-one could hear me. It ended up in a scout hall in Cronulla, I seem to remember.
I suppose it’s impossible at that early age to imagine where one will end up but overall I’m really grateful for my musical experiences as I was growing up – I was the school choir accompanist at the age of ten and have always been a good accompanist since then – I learnt to listen and anticipate, both skills absolutely essential as an accompanist. I’ve played many types of music in many different places with many different people over the years but my roots have always been in classical music and that is why my adventures with the Stuart piano have been so valuable to me, because at my age you don’t normally get an opportunity to reinvent what one has done over a long period of time, and, quite possibly, got into a rut from which it is very difficult to extract yourself.
But that is what has happened, and now that my eye is hopefully OK for the long term (it received a clean bill of health yesterday) it’s time both to reflect on the past fifty years and to plan for the next fifty. There are a number of ideas that have been floating around in my mind for a while now, and whilst I have the opportunity it’s an ideal time to further those and see where they may lead. I’m certainly continually looking for more pieces to explore the sonorities of the piano and recording these and the others I already have secreted away will become more of a priority over the coming weeks.