Places I work

As a freelance artist I work for lots of different organisations and in many diverse environments. Apart from my schools, here are some of the main projects that I refer to in this blog:

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra [MSO]

For many years I was the Creative Director of the Community Outreach Program for the MSO, which was a pretty unique kind of job to have. These days I still direct many of the orchestra’s outreach projects, in particular projects with the MSO ArtPlay Ensemble (a composing and performing ensemble for children aged 8-13 years, working alongside musicians from the MSO), and the MSO Jams program  – express music-making for the whole family, in which a new piece is improvised, composed and performance in an hour. Many of these projects use orchestral repertoire as the starting point for creative work and improvisations.

Australian Youth Orchestra [AYO]

The AYO offers all sorts of extraordinary performance, training, and educational opportunities to young musicians in Australia. Most of my involvement falls within the Regional Residency programs for string quartets – for the last few years these residencies have included collaborative composition projects directed by me, that team the resident AYO quartet up with young local musicians in a regional town, to spend 2 intensive days performing and composing their own music.

The Song Room

The Song Room provides all sorts of music education support for disadvantaged schools throughout Australia, including residencies in schools by Teaching Artists. I am one of those teaching artists. I also on occasion run teacher and artist professional development sessions for TSR, and have written a resource for their website on the Alphabet Dance (first described on this blog!).

University of Melbourne

I am a member of the teaching staff in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (Artistic and Creative Education cluster). I teach a variety of courses (it changes each semester), all of which focus on teaching strategies and approaches for music in primary school classrooms.