| BACK |
Tangled Trails Out of Telopea
The enormous variety of Telopeans' memories moves me in many ways, and Brett prompts us all gently to send in our own. So I here I am trying to complete something. Mostly I remember not fitting in, yet they were some of my most formative years. I got on well with: John Bourchier, Ian Kerr and Stan Bakker, all of whom I've gladly seen in recent years; and Roger Brown, just round the corner who I haven't. There were friends with great record collections: Ian Barnes, Bill Andrews (at whose poolside Are you Experienced blew me out of the water), Chris Slater, forever working on the MG while we listened to Simon and Garfunkel and Fred Schodt (who also taught me my first guitar chords). There were others I hung around with: Peter Murphy, Steve Bisset, Richard Swan and Len Whyte, Peter Harris, Peter Thompson, Ian Deane, John Engledow, John Craig, Robert Somosi and Gunther Ploy (more often after school at Chris Margules' place, and later at the Trevilian's).
Girls were, sadly, another country, but a few got under the radar. Though attempting to talk in the playground/quad or in corridors was generally a disastrous enterprise, there were other places. The only sport I ever showed talent for was gymnastics, where two extraordinary classmates created miracles in movement: Christine Harris and Deborah McFarlane. I recall Ian Kerr and a very competent Japanese student (clearly not Fuji, but that's the name that comes), but Christine and Deb shone in my memory for years. Jane Rose would occasionally turn up at my house with her father, a friend of my parents, and we never communicated properly until years later (and well done, Virginia, on your story). Cathy Falk also turned up years later, with a bus full of gamelan players from Queensland. We even did a gig together. Moira Scollay and Bridget Whitelaw also proved kindred spirits in latter years.
But I was a lonely, nervous small face at school, and one girl helped bring me out of my shell: Suzie Lamb. We did drama classes with Carol Woodrow, older sister of Lyn Armstrong, with whom we formed a trio of compassion and artistry. To them I played Beatles songs as quickly as I learned them. We did plays and life was real. Then she was gone. Love had struck one. The mouse ran down.
I had left Telopea, on a scholarship to Scotch College Melbourne and life became dark.
Like my dear friend Fred Schodt, I got trunks. Old ones, even olde. I haul them into schools to show off angklung and wayang kulits mostly (to the horror of the students and teachers), but there've been a couple that even I dreaded opening. Like a hair shirt, I'd try a few over the decades, and often I couldn't stand more than a quarter of an hour. Put it away until I'm stronger. Play some angry metal until the shame and anger burn off.
One trunk had my compositions - orchestral, jazz, rock opera, hundreds of songs. Like so many of my schoolmates, I of course wanted to perform. Serious guitar - like Jimi, Jeff Beck, Clapton, Page, Blackmore, serious singing. Like Steve Marriott, Gerry Humphreys, Steve Winwood or Edgar Winter. But I also wanted to compose, arrange and orchestrate. To me that was the legacy of the 60s - those astonishing rock orchestral blends. I wanted to do that. George Martin meeting Shostakovich. (AND I wanted to do Ethnomusicology. It took a few years to even find out what that was called. But I'll come back to that later.) So after my exile in Scotch College Melbourne, I came back to Canberra to start my musical studies at The Canberra School of Music. I was a "late starter", but learning to read and write music at a ferocious pace. Played classical guitar and everything else guitarists played. It was brilliant at the end of the sixties. Scintillatingly dazzlingly. The guitar's boundaries were being pushed out every week. Somebody would do something new and you'd hear it on the radio or a friend's LP player - like getting New Scientist, but at a hundred times the speed and a thousand times the passion. Rather annoyed the music professors, who thought that Schonberg was about as far as one should go. Jim Cotter and Timothy Kain were colleagues. But they got to stay. I was asked to leave at the end of my second year. Hadn't done anything wrong, they just felt they didn't have a course appropriate for me. By that stage I'd been shouldered out of schools, groups of friends, theatre companies and my first true lover. Only time I ever contemplated suicide. But I figured there wasn't any future in it. So I packed my compositions away, and explored the fruitpicker's trail. My father tracked me down months later, and coerced me into a CCAE course, where I learnt some amazing biochemistry and punched Fortran cards, until I realised nothing there was going to satisfy the musiclust. Just taught guitar and gigged, got ripped off, guitar stolen etc.
Then I got an interesting job punching the pioneer Alice Moyle's collection of Aboriginal songs into Fortran. Great music, great skill, (stupid project -why not just print them?) and Alice told me not to give up, to go and get my qualifications. Next year I set off for WA, knocked on the door of the University and auditioned. Wrote a couple of my comps from memory, which along with Alice's recommendation, got me into the course. They didn't throw me out, but cancelled Ethnomusicology in my fourth year and refused to mark any of my orchestral compositions (especially the ones with electric instruments). My composition trunk enlarged. Left with a useless MusB, and went fruitpicking again. Had a daughter by then, from a relationship I should never have been in. Explored WA's South and North, freed myself and started back at the beginning, teaching and gigging. The compositions were now in a portable bureau I'd built. Almost got married, went to Java and studied every form of music I could find. Came back and started teaching gamelan, played in heavy metal bands.
Then I met Gwyneth, and finally found some happiness in a relationship. Got given a gamelan orchestra and got a job as Community Music Coordinator in the Pilbara. For the first time in my life I felt really engaged in life and work. Two years later (1987-8) it all came crashing down. No job, no relationship, sole parent, few friends. 1989 I got my DipEd and started teaching, but I didn't know how to work the system, so I was frequently unemployed. Taught electric guitar at Christ Church Grammar between other gigs, and picked up the commission to write an opera with a Nyoongar playwright. Also got my wayang kulit about Ned Kelly happening. Had a Mac to print my scores, so the composition suitcase became a trunk.
My son Ruairi was born, but his mum and I soon drifted apart (my daughter attended only 5 days of year 9 in pique). She drifted all the way to the Hunter, NSW with him. (My parents having passed away in quick succession, despite decades of separation) Thus straddling the continent paternally, I sought a life solution to validate trips across Australia - get my Masters in Enomusicology, just like I'd tried before. I moved to NSW, enrolled at the University of New England in Ethno. And I got it!
And I realised: I'd never really graduated until then. See, I'd left Yarralumla Primary for England, come back halfway through 1st Year in Telopea , left Telopea for Scotch, been expelled, asked to leave the School of Music, got the wrong degree at UWA, but finally I had a proper graduation ceremony, and my son came with me. Got the photo. God, it's bad. But I got to graduate as a real Ethnomusiologist at last. And the jobs had all gone.
So there I was, out in the bush in the Hunter, in a house I'd mostly built myself (Council threatening to demolish it regularly), and I thought: maybe I should open up the composition trunk. And The Other One. The one I haven't talked about, with memories of shows, groups, love letters, early friends. I really hadn't wanted to look back. I'd been to Hell, brought Eurydice back, but lost her, and looking back was abhorrent. Betrayals, humiliations, regrets, visions of laughing debauched ex-friends, drug disasters, failed alternative movements, decades of protest movements ( there are some bloody weird stories of me, you know, wearing Buddhist robes, "reciting sutras, fingering rosary beads" - bollocks! There was one book, one, right, and until the bicycle accident I could do the Lotus position, but I was simply interested in other religions. My Dad did occasional sermons at St Andrews, why wouldn't I be? No robes, no guru, no method.)
Sorry, I digress. Anyway, the fact is, you have to look these things in the face, conquer your demons, and heal all the broken children inside you. I already had a large workshop for instrument and housebuilding, but what I really needed was a large psychophilosophicomedical bunch of tools. And opening the trunks got easier.
So I sold the bush block in Duns Creek, moved in with my girlfriend Richelle (disaster! but I still love her), and found myself a good new job and house in WA. And Brett found me, and said there'll be a Telopean Reunion, how about getting a band together? Well, of course - and, even if that doesn't happen, the process has been a fine journey.
Tangled trails out of Telopea
Flying around Australia like a migratory bird
Then the circle wishes completion
The snake tastes its tail
A distant Waratah in my hand
All moments are
now
CURRICULUM VITAE
Mike Burns MA, MusB,DipEd
2010 Fado performances by Fado Bica or Fado Piccolo (the smaller version) at: The Portuguese Clubs of Sydney and Victoria; View Factory and Royal Exchange, Newcastle; National Folk Festival and St Albans Festival; performance at Kulcha, WA, with assistance of Portuguese Club of WA. School workshops (general music, gamelan, wayang kulit) continue. Work with the Guitar Building School, producing a dulcimer, rebuilding a Gibson Mandolin, and a Coimbra Portuguese guitar.
2009 Fado & Music book launch, Royal Exchange, Newcastle Fado performances at Minstrels at Martinville and Bargoed House, Swansea
Study of Fado guitarra in Portugal. Song Room contract concludes. Publication of “Lost Playground” – a collection of advanced grade classical guitar pieces. Some work as guest artist in projects. Wayang kulit presentation at Central Coast Grammar.
2008 The Song Room position continues. Solo/group performance work in a variety of styles continues in venues throughout Hunter. Private tuition practice continues.
2007 Presented paper on “The Intersection of Composer, Performer and Ethnomusicologist” and performance at NZ Asia Pacific Composers’ Conference. Guitar program at Metford Ps. Trip to Java and Bali, Performances and interviews at Mendut, Central Java, wayang studies in Malang , East Java. Workshops in gamelan and wayang at Central Coast Grammar School, Scone KiaOra Music camp and St Johns College, Nambour, QLD. Soul/blues band “The Brothers of Mercy” formed – steady work follows.
Commenced 2 year contract with The Song Room, sponsored by Coal & Allied, working with 12 schools around the Upper and Lower Hunter. Duties include regular workshops, music camps, community liaison, mentorship and professional development for classroom teachers.
2006 K-12music prgram at Linuwel School, East Maitland. Teaching practice through Music Specialist Maitland. Work with Michael Cohen in Livesites project.
2005 Graduation MA Hons (Ethnomusicology) UNE , Music Teacher KotaraHS, Maitland HS, Newcastle HS, Artist in res Byron Bay.
2004 Music Teacher Newcastle HS, work on Sumatran theatre project
2003 Music Teacher Great Lakes College, Tuncurry. Ethnomusicology lecturer Avondale College
2002 Coordinator and performer at Inaugural Percussionale festival
2001 "In the Koorah-Koorah" written for Fremantle Orchestra. Celtic, Middle Eastern and gamelan groups perform regularly
2000-7 Teacher of music program at Linuwel School, East Maitland, covering Javanese gamelan, rock, world music, Indigenous, folk dance and instruments. Appeared at Folk Club, REAPS, Wollombi festival, Mattara, Cultural Stomp,etc. Jug band “The Morpeth Jugbusters” appears at various Jazz festivals in Hunter region.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
1999-2000 Music teacher/ director at Kwinana SHS. Visit to Jakarta - Wayang Kulit festival, meeting with President Habibie.
1999 Original CD "Do me the Kindness".
- BA (Ethno -Hons), and subsequent Masters’ in Ethnomusicology at University of New England
1995 Co-organiser/teacher at Inaugural gathering of Gamelans, UNE
1990-2000 Guitar teacher Christ Church Grammar. Ethnocompositional projects: Wayang Kelly, first Aboriginal opera project in Australia My Spiritual Dreaming, Orchestra of Global Nomads.
1990-1 Music teacher at Jandakot, Hainsworth, North Perth Primary School
1989 Diploma of Education, University of Western Australia
1988 ART IN WORKING LIFE PROJECTS
1985-7 Community Music Coordinator in Karratha- Art in Working Life project (AMWU/ETU/WA Dept Arts/Australia Council)
1984 Led UWA group tour of Java and Bali. Various concerts
1983 Three months study travel in Java (WA Arts Council). "Wayang Voyage" project.
1979-83 Free lance musician, composer, ethnomusicologist, guitar teacher, luthier Work in rural WA. Coordinated festivals in Nannup, Bridgetown and Broome.
1976-9 Moved to WA. Bachelor of Music Degree (Composition) at UWA. Professional and community music work in Fremantle and the NorthWest with UWA Drama Group, Playhouse Theatre, Desperate Measures Theatre, PUCS.
CANBERRA
1969-75 Six months work as ethnomusicological assistant at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Roaring Wombat tour of NSW South Coast.
BA at Australian National University,Canberra; Diploma of Music, Canberra School of Music; Diploma in Computing Studies, Canberra CAE.Work with Canberra Repertory, Childrens' Theatre, SALT Artists, ANU Drama group, The Kingston Kats (a community arts cooperative) Many works composed Continual work in rock, jazz and folk groups.
Recordings
"Melange" 1975 cassette of original compositions for mixed instruments
"Do me the Kindness" 1999 CD original songs
"Rocks to Japan" and "Bad Old Days" 1986 worker songs from the Pilbara
Stage productions
"Wayang Kelly" Australian-Javanese Wayang Kulit on Ned Kelly – tours to Jakarta, Surabaya, Wellington NZ, and various Australian Festivals
"My Spiritual Dreaming" Aboriginal rock opera (Libretto; Eddie Bennell)
from which “Muma Dunji” for the Nova Ensemble and the overture “In the Koorah-koorah” were derived.
Instrumental skills
Guitar : Studied under Sam Dunne, Sadie Bishop, Susan Ellis, Peter Altmeier-Mort
Professional guitar teacher since 1970
Attended Guitar schools at UWA and WA Conservatorium
Studied Trombone at Scotch College Melb (Stan Code)
Flute at Canberra School Of Music (Margaret
Harp with Jane Brook
2 Awards in Inaugural NSW Harp Eisteddfod
Gamelan instruments with teachers too numerous to mention
Turkish Baglama with Sabahattin Agadçik
Sarod with John Barlowe and Adrian McNeil
Also: Mandolin, Banjo, Lap Steel , Harmonica, Celtic Harp, Turkish/Egyptian Oud, various percussion styles/instruments – Latin, Middle Eastern, African,