Skip to main content

My Dad, Composer

I've recently discovered Brisbane's local classical music radio station, 4MBS. I've been listening to more classical music lately, prompted by my Mum sending me her massive classical CD collection last year.  I've been quite comfortable in my own, very small, classical music collection for years, but this was an opportunity to broaden my knowledge a bit.  That, and a growing frustration with commercial radio, its ads and its annoying presenters, got me switching stations lately, and I stumbled across 4MBS.

Listening to a lot more classical music, as well as listening to a recent program on 20th century composers, has got me thinking about my Dad, also a 20th century composer.  Sadly for Dad, my appreciation for classical music developed slowly, and as a child I wasn't generally interested, except for the piece with the kettle and the pot having an argument.  Dad will have to supply the name of it!!

I would now love to listed to all of Dad's works, especially as I know that he's a bit of a genius, so they're bound to be excellent.  I've started searching for published pieces, and there are a few on some compilations that I can get, but what I'd really like to do is climb up into Dad's attic, where I know he's got boxes of his recorded music, albeit on ye olde reels, and listen to all of his recordings. Perhaps the next time my brothers are visiting Dad they can climb up into the roof and find them?!

I would hope there is still someone, somewhere who could transfer it all to CD or mpg or whatever, so that we could listen to them.  Along with his painting and drawing, Dad has created a catalogue of amazing work that all of us kids can be really, really proud of. 

Our parents are pretty amazing, really.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding my physical challenges: An analogy

So, I've been trying to come up with a way to explain to a non-disabled person what it's like to face physical challenges at work, as a person with a disability. My current workplace is very physically demanding, even for me, a wheelchair user with long arms, full reach, abdominal muscle control and good balance. After 2.5 years of just getting on with it, despite the inaccessibility of large areas of my workplace, I'm at a point where I'm having to say, 'Enough. I can't do it any more.'. My employer is struggling to understand what's changed. Why is my workplace 'suddenly' inaccessible? What has changed with my health, to make my work so arduous for me now? Here's my analogy*: Imagine that you are looking for a job in the field you have just qualified for. A new employer says, if you move out to our location, we'll give you a permanent job. You just have to be able to carry 10kg. Cool, you think, I can do that. I'll uproot myself...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Cleaner, please don't wash my dishes.

(Warning: contains swearing. You'll see why, I hope.) Considering that I am constantly fighting with piles of dirty dishes in my little kitchen, you'd think that the first thing I'd want my cleaner to do is wash them. And I used to. But I quickly realised that although the dishes moved from the pile, through the soapy water in the sink and to the drainer, the vast majority of them didn't end up being clean. It turned out to be a great big waste of time - and a huge disappointment - and I had to wash the stupid things myself anyway. Mine aren't as pretty, but I do have a yellow bowl. So now I do them myself, eventually. When my cleaner comes, once a fortnight, I'll sit and do my dishes while he or she is doing the housework tasks I find difficult (rather than just annoying). I have also even been known to do a sink full of dishes in between cleaning visits, often in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, or when I have other pressing things to d...
5 comments
Read more

What I learned on prac.

I'm pretty sure that I learned far more on my prac than the students I was teaching. Some of it will stand me in good stead for my next prac, and for when I am a fully-qualified teacher. Some of it was very disappointing and disallusioning. One of the first things I learned was that my supervising teacher no longer wanted to be a teacher, but was sticking with it for a few more years, while her youngest child finishes high school. Another teacher in our staff room was only staying with teaching to boost his superannuation before he retired. Yet another teacher didn't speak to me during my four weeks sitting at the desk next to him, and seemed to dislike all students and the teaching of them. There were frequent discussions in there about students being "not very bright" and "unteachable", including one entire year. No effort was put in to teaching these students, as it was deemed to be a waste of effort. However, imaginative teaching was hampered ...
4 comments
Read more