I was recently reminded that my website wasn’t exactly keeping pace with my life so I guess it’s time to outline some more recent developments in this space. A pretty big lifechange happened in mid-September 2025; I finished up at the University of Southern Queensland after 10.5 years of full-time employment. I had some great times there but things were changing rapidly in the university and the programs, so I was happy to let it go and become a jobbing musician again.
This, I suppose when I think about it, precipitated the trip I returned from a week & a half ago from Europe. I did the typical Aussie traveller thing and tried to cover too much ground, but I had some great experiences and caught up with some special people (missed a couple too), and I managed not to miss any planes or trains! It’s kind of exhausting, that kind of solo travel, or at least it is for someone my age (!) but I basically like just being in new places, so really worth doing. Also great to come home again though!
By the way, the person that pointed out my slackness at website blogging was the man who runs this page; https://yhalinen.com/from-brno-to-u-stare-pani/, (sensibly trying to find some background about me), a photographer who journals the jazz happenings of Prague. I’ve never played a jam session that has been reviewed before!
Just before I left, I was surprised and very pleased to be offered the teaching job that I was doing before I started at USQ, that is, teaching the bass students in the jazz stream at the Queensland Conservatorium. I’ve just begun catching up with the students there and it’s great to be back!
On the gig front, the Unladylike Big Band has a flurry of gigs on, I’m about to get into rehearsals for two shows happening in the Anywhere Festival, Ruth Apelt’s homage to Janis Ian, and edition #3 of Anje West’s Ladysinger’s Record Parlour, where we get to play some favourite songs from the 70s and 80s.
In other news, I finally made it into the lovely studio at Marist Ashgrove (thanks Andrew Butt) to belatedly record a handful of jazz tunes plus the last few songs that Leah Cotterell and I have written together (with a couple of reworkings of old originals). It’s still being fine tuned, but of course you will be hearing about it when there is a product to spruik!
I’m going to try harder to post about my upcoming gigs here in future, and do some updating on the pages, I promise!