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A family background rich with creative inspiration and a keen appreciation of baroque music has led Amy to her career as a musician, playing both recorder and oboe.
Amy will be visiting the Hoskins Centre on July 12 with the Australian Haydn Ensmble, to present an array of classical string quartets and oboe quartets, including works by Mozart and Haydn ...
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here are you originally from? I was born in Armidale and lived there until I finished school. While I grew up, my family made the most of Armidale's gifts.We often spent weekends bushwalking and swimming in the gorges, cooking tea in billy cans and sausages on sticks, and we’d usually get home fairly late, as my father would want to try a new path back to the car. I played some sports, and on Friday mornings at 6.25am I went on runs. My brother and I were taken to concerts, to the Art Museum. My mother ensured there was a rotation of art works around the walls of our house. My family always ate dinner together, no matter what time Dad got home from the hospital, and over the table we talked and debated our way through every imaginable topic – nothing was off limits. It got pretty noisy at times! Apart from my music lessons, I thank my years in Stage One drama school with the late Astrid Blake for an incredible education. How did you first become involved with music? Tell us about your journey ... My father is a pianist, and there was live music of some sort at home daily. Once I could grapple an instrument (I first played piano), my father and I would play together. There were often musicians in the house, either playing with Dad, or coming through Armidale for concerts, and I was always welcome to sit and talk with them. I had wonderful recorder lessons with Zana Clarke and hours-long harpsichord lessons with Ros Halton. At some point, as a teenager, I decided to practise seriously, with the goal of studying music overseas. I first went to Melbourne University, where I was given a great musical and emotional preparation for moving to Europe. I successfully auditioned for the “Blok” at the Amsterdam Conservatory, the sort-of “mecca” of recorder study, and commenced some intense, hard-working years. After a trip home to Australia one holiday, I fortuitously ended up in the same row on the plane as my future historical oboe teacher, giving me the courage to ask him to teach me! After graduating with a Master’s degree in both oboe and recorder, I moved to Basel, Switzerland, with my now-husband (German recorder player and jazz saxophonist Andreas Böhlen), where I have been freelancing for the past 6 years. I perform regularly with a Basel-based baroque orchestra, and I travel a lot to play with different groups around Europe. Who and what has been your inspiration? The English soprano, Emma Kirkby, visited Armidale with 18 new england focus.
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Musica Viva when I was a child. I was obsessed with her voice, and with baroque music, from that point on. When I was 14 I met a famous Swiss recorder player, Conrad Steinmann, and after that I was determined to study recorder in Europe. These days, any artist who takes a personal approach, who is convincing and has integrity, inspires me. My brother (Melbourne architect Edward Power) designs beautiful structures which are then built, and that inspires me (if I make a mistake on stage nobody dies, but if he makes a mistake …) Running through the mountains also inspires me and is a great way of spending a 3-hour rehearsal break in a Swiss town. What brings you back to Australia? I am playing several projects in July, firstly as part of Pinchgut Opera’s production of Salieri’s The Chimney Sweep in Sydney. Then I am playing a couple of programs with The Australian Haydn Ensemble, and then a concert directed by Andrew Lawrence-King at the World Harp Congress in Sydney. I love playing with Australian musicians, particularly for the ease in communicating with people of my own culture! You and members of the Australian Haydn Ensemble
will be performing at the Hoskins Centre on the 12th July. What can we expect to see and hear? This will be my first time meeting and playing with this ensemble, and I am looking forward to collaborating with a young, motivated group of people who have already brought so much to the music scene in Australia. We are playing a program of classical string quartets and oboe quartets, including works by Mozart and Haydn, and we are playing on copies of instruments from these composers’ time. But don’t be afraid, this approach just brings another sound world to this repertoire, one that can easily communicate the many small gestures in this music. My first experience of hearing classical period wind instruments in an orchestra, in Brussels when I was 20, was mind blowing. Plans for the future? It isn’t easy to plan my life! I am always surprised by what happens. I am going to be spending a lot of time between Austria and Switzerland in the near future, so I should probably learn to yodel. Thanks Amy.