The PeoplePerformers
Sophie Adamus When Soph was born her mother said "look at those long fingers, maybe she'll be a piano player...." and that was where it all started. When school began she was put on the violin but as luck would have it her violin teacher too noticed her long fingers and said that I would be more suited to the cello. Thus began my love affair with the cello and experimenting with different sounds. Upon starting at QUT she first encountered the world of laptops, blinking lights, electronics and strings and completed her degree at QUT with a digital performance major. Since completing my degree she has been composing her own songs and performing regularly with deepblue and local bands and immersing herself in community music work . More recently she has been to the Solomon Islands, Peru, Zimbabwe and worked across Australia with underprivileged youth. Currently Sophie is working with a colleague in Zimbabwe to start a community music school in a very poor area of Harare. She hopes to one day become a registered music therapist and continue my learning in this field.
Dane Alexander Dane graduated from QUT with a Bachelor of Music in 2006. As a sound designer/composer, he specialises in multiple speaker contemporary theatre, performance art and installations. Notable designs include David Fenton’s, Unstable Acts, a decaphonic speaker performance art installation; and Accented Body, an international collaboration of sound, visuals and dance. Recently, Dane composed the music/sound for QACI’s theatre production of Brecht's, Private Life of the Master Race. Dane has produced full-length theatre production soundtracks for internationally touring dance companies, including Urban Wonderland for Raw Dance Company and Full Metal Racket for Raw Dance Company and Grant Collins. Dane has produced corporate soundtracks for internationally renowned/ranked break-dance crew, Skill@Will, and international events including the 2006 Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival. Dane coordinated the sound and technical specifications, operation and ProTools for the 2008 Art of Record Production Conference featuring producers Hank Shocklee (Public Enemy), Richard Lush (The Beatles), Philip Williams (Status Quo), Daniel Denholm (Midnight Oil) to name a few…
Alice Buckingham Alice made her first musical sounds on the violin at age 7, but discovered her true voice on the viola at age 15. In 2005 Alice was awarded a Bachelor of Music (Music Performance) with Honours Class I from the University of Queensland and was a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship to study a Masters in Music Performance with Patricia Pollett, her musical mentor. Alice received her LMusA in 2005 was a recipient of the Harmer Memorial Scholarship in the same year, and in 2006 was awarded first prize in the UQ Postgraduate String Performance Prize. In addition to her music studies Alice has also studied speech and drama, in which she was awarded her ATCL in 2003, receiving an additional award for Top of the State (QLD). Alice has toured Europe three times with QYO and AYO. She has also toured Malaysia twice with the Quintessential String Quartet. She has performed in Masterclasses with Charles Castleman (USA), Paul Neubauer (USA), Helen Callus (USA), Simon Oswell (USA) and Stephen Barlow (UK), and in concerts with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Southern Cross Soloists, Tommy Emmanuel and The Cat Empire. Alice has also participated in the Melbourne Orchestra Project, and has performed at the Perth International Arts Festival, the Adelaide Festival of Arts and the Brisbane Festival with various orchestras and ensembles. She is also currently a member of the Camerata of St John’s, a string chamber ensemble.
Kim Burgess Take part sound designer; mix with software developer and user interface designer; then add a little audio visual geekery and a whole bunch of LED's and you'll create yourself a Kim Burgess. At an early age he was turned away from more traditional acoustic instruments by his father’s use of bagpipes and accordion as an alarm clock. He briefly courted the electric and double bass before realising that a laptop was much easier to carry and a lot more fun. After leaving a sound design degree at QUT to go play with shiny things that made lots of noise on the other side of the world he spent a bit of time creating audio for computer games, recording everything that made an interesting noise and nurturing his love of all things tech, all things music and the combination of the two. He has toured with and done tech for Marilyn Manson, Parklife Festival, Splendour in the Grass, Woodford Folk Festival, Children of the Swarm, Guinness Hurling Cubed, Opera Queensland, Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony broadcast and other shows across the UK, Republic of Ireland and Australia. Outside of deepBlue Kim spends his time developing user interfaces and sensor networks for interactive media environments, fire twirling and getting way to excited about what you can do with 1's and 0's.
Heidi Chapelow Always the drama kid at music camp and the music kid at drama camp, Heidi has taken her passion and playfulness and shared it widely. Co-founder of youth circus, Circo Blurto and women’s circus Ruby Bloomers, Heidi collaborated to create The 3 Co-opra-tiers and toured the show and circus workshops regionally for four years. Joining forces with deepblue is a return to the musical side of drama. “It’s a thrill to be part of this fabulous band. This is the first position I’ve found for a ‘Unicycling Violist’!”
Sofia Di Stefano Sofia completed her Bachelor of Music degree in 2000 with a High Distinction at the Elder Conservatorium and was awarded the “Florence Cooke Award”. She was subsequently accepted to study under Prof. Gunars Larsens at the Musikhochschule Zentralschweiz in Lucerne, Switzerland. Since then, Sofia has performed as a soloist with chamber orchestras in Lucerne, Basel and Zürich and has been concert master of various chamber orchestras. The winner of numerous prizes in the Adelaide Eisteddfods, including the “String Concerto Competition”, Sofia was invited to perform solo with the Burnside Symphony Orchestra in 2003. While in Switzerland, Sofia played on various occasions in a professional orchestra and participated in many master classes, including one conducted by the “Guaneri Trio Prague”. She also completed her Konzertreifediplom at the Musikhochschule Lucerne. Since returning to Adelaide, Sofia has performed with the Adelaide Art Orchestra for seasons of Mikado, South Pacific, Pirates of Penzance and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. In 2005 Sofia performed for Delta Goodrem’s The Visualise Tour, toured Queensland as part of the quartet “String Sirens” playing for The Reminiscing Tour with Glenn Shorrock, Doug Parkinson and Wendy Matthews. In 2006/07 she performed with Il Divo, Kanye West, the Ten Tenors and Patrizio Buane. In 2008 Sofia extensively toured Australia with Co Opera Inc. as leader of the string quartet and acting concertmaster of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra performing Verdi’s La Traviata.
Emma Hales Emma joined deepblue in January 2008, during her final year of music at QUT. Since then, her brain’s capacity for memorisation has more than quadrupled and she has been inducted into Facebook’s ‘International Society of Dancing Cellists’. She has also had the privilege of playing Iain Grandage’s contemporary cello concerto ‘The Flying Dream’ to thousands of people across the country. Along with deepblue; Emma also plays in folk-pop trio Sweet Fawn and for Brisbane songstress Tara Simmons. When she’s not on stage, you can spot her cruising around Brisbane in her 1974 Volkswagen Kombi, consuming tacos and margaritas or dancing the night away in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.
Alex Hodgins Alex is just a typical hunk, who knows everything about everything. Age you started playing? I reluctantly attended piano lessons during my primary school years, going through a few teachers and never sitting my first exam. After years of attempting to give it up each week before my lesson I was finally allowed to call it a day when my teacher disowned me over the school holidays. By this time I had fallen in love with the saxophone and knew it was what I wanted to do with my life What instrument do you play in deepblue ? piano...... funny how things change Other roles in deepblue? It's easier to just say I don't play a string instrument and that the minority of my time with deepblue is spent on stage. Lately most of my time is spent on the promotion/media side as well as creating the DVD and pushing the research end What you like most about deepblue? The traveling and the trouble shooting Favourite deepblue track? Mars. Whenever I hear it, it takes me back to our first tour. We should play it more often
Wayne Jennings Wayne Jennings grew up in a funeral parlour in a mining town in a barren desert in central Australia. There he learnt how to play the cello, how to dig holes, and that life was a Very, Very Serious matter. He still plays the cello, but digging holes and Taking Life Seriously didn’t really work out. Wayne developed his technique of Cello Dancing in order to make performing Pachelbel’s Canon more interesting. He has toured Australia, Europe and the Pacific with assorted orchestras and chamber ensembles. Most recently he has worked with busking trio Strictly Strings, alt-rock band the Red Paintings, jazz duo the Gamble Sisters and the West End Chamber Orchestra. He has performed with Evermore, Grinspoon, Missy Higgins, the Rogue Traders, Mogwai, Jason Webley and the Dresden Dolls. He is Music Director for the Ragtag Review burlesque cabaret. He is currently studying jazz bass, and learning Circus Arts at Circa - Rock and Roll Circus. Wayne joined deep blue to further explore his passion for combining music, movement and multimedia. Wayne’s cello is made of carbon-fibre and is indestructible. His dreams are made of coal and they burn.
Greta Kelly Greta plays violin and occasionally the theramin and kamanche tarhu (a spikefiddle made by Australian luthier Peter Biffen). She also plays in a variety of Middle Eastern groups, including world fusion band Mzaza, Egyptian ensemble Muziz, and Persian group Kashkul. She has studied and performed Turkish, Arabic, Persian and Indian music both in Australia and overseas, giving her an understanding of unusual scales and rhythms and the chance to perform with an eclectic mix of dancers, vocalists and some very strange instruments. Greta's grandfather, mum and sister encouraged her to learn the violin at a young age, which led her to study privately and throughout school with some inspiring violinists. After completing a Bachelor of Arts and an English teaching qualification, she lived in the Czech Republic, where she discovered Eastern European and Irish folk music. Over the past 10 years Greta's focus has slowly moved further East, learning Balkan, Turkish, Iraqi, Persian, and Egyptian classical, folk and sacred music. It's taken her to some pretty curious places, including world-renowned Labyrinth Music Workshops in Greece, a two month tour of Turkey, and this year, Iran.
Caity Lacy Caity is one of Deepblue's newest performers starting in August of 2011. Before that she travelled worldwide playing violin in an electric string trio to countries such as India, Taiwan, U.S.A, Japan, China and South Korea. Combined with this, Caity has juggled University studies and violin tutoring. She is now in her final year at Griffith University and teaches budding young violinists at Saint Stephen's College on the Gold Coast. In her spare time you would either find Caity on the netball court or with her friends out on the water wake-boarding or just cruising down the broad water on her boat. You will never miss Caity in a crowd; she stands 180cm tall and even higher in her party heels!
Jenny Marshall As a young girl, Jenny loved to dance starting ballet classes at the age of five. She soon began all styles of dancing from tap and jazz to contemporary. Unfortunately, when she began pointe shoes in her ballet class her teacher told her that her ankles were too weak and she would never make it as a dancer! Devastated! What would she do now? The answer...Violin...and it turned out she was a much better violinist than she was a dancer. Since then Jenny has completed her Bachelor of Music at The University of Queensland and her Masters of Music at the University of Tasmania. She has performed with many orchestras including the Gold Coast Youth Orchestra, Queensland Youth Symphony and The Symphony and Opera Academy of the Pacific. Jenny now enjoys sharing her passion for music with others and teaches the violin and viola to kids and adults of all ages.
Evan Setiawan Evan was born in Surabaya "the city of heroes", Indonesia. He spent the first twelve years of his life with little care for music. His earliest performing memory was when he had to sing solo for his grade two class, which he executed so badly it seemed he was musically hopeless. All this began to change when the organ fad hit town and his whole family decided to take music lessons. Soon he would be on the organ night and day, just to keep ahead of his competitive siblings.
Hik Sugimoto Born near Tokyo Disneyland, Hik's musical development began early when he started play on pots 'n pans at age 3. He then upgraded to a real drumkit in high school. After countless stints in local rock/metal/j-rock/doowop/ gregorian chant bands, he decided to become a little more serious and in 2005, began studying drums at QUT. Apart from being the stickman in deepblue, Hik also works as a session drummer and a drum teacher in Brisbane (and is always accepting students of all levels!). One of the many multi-instrumentalists in the group, Hik can play piano, guitar, mandolin, saxophone and violin. Some "lucky" deepblue audiences may have seen Hik play violin with youngblue onstage. As an Internet addict, Hik updates the twitter and facebook posts while on the road with the group. He can be followed at: http://twitter.com/deepbluespeak, http://www.facebook.com/DeepBlueOrchestra, twitter.com/themightyhiksta
Amanda Tio An accomplished pianist by the age of twelve, Amanda turned her attention to the double bass, achieving an AMusA and graduating with a BMus (Hons) in Performance from the University of Queensland in 2004. She is a casual double bassist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and is the violinist in the band Sweet Fawn. She also enjoys playing at the occasional wedding on violin or cello. Amanda currently teaches strings and piano at a few schools in Brisbane. She has previously played with the X-Collective, Australian Youth Orchestra, Queensland Youth Symphony, Tetrabass (double bass quartet), various community orchestras and in the orchestra for the animated film “Articulate!”.
Instruments you play? Double bass and a bit of violin, piano, cello, bass guitar.
What you like most about db? The people in the group, the people we meet, the original music. I like that we are unconventional.
Phil Wilson Phil was born in 1969 in Sydney. He began playing the guitar at the age of 12, and studied with David Loveland in Brisbane, for 12 years. He graduated from Griffith University with a BA (Humanities) in Film and Media, and subsequently studied audio production before enrolling at the Southbank Institute of Tafe contemporary music course in 1995. After touring Australia, Japan and Europe, he studied composition with Robert Davidson, Michael Whelan, Stephen Stanfield and Richard Vella at QUT 1998-2001. Bachelor of Music with Distinction). He has attended master classes with English composer Steve Martland and with musicians of Tokyo Inter-Arts. Phill has been a composer for Deepblue (since 2004), on staff at QUT as a sessional academic (2005) and teaches privately guitar, bass, ukulele (the thinking man’s violin), composition and music technology. A keen performer, Phill also plays piano and the accordion. Recent tours have included France (2008) and Malaysia (2009) – with China, the USA and a return to Japan and France planned for 2010. Particularly interested in traditional forms of music, Phil began to study Japanese music and drama in 1998. He was a finalist in the 2005 Oz Music awards (classical) and received a star on the Brisbane city Brunswick Street rock’n’roll walk of fame 2008. Aside from performance and composition, Phil works frequently as a mix/mastering engineer and producer, having been involved with a myriad of artists and labels on over 20 releases. He has also worked within the fields of arranging, live sound, film scoring, publishing and media conversion. More recently he has been touring with Deepblue (Winners of the 2009 APACA Drover Award for 'Excellent Audience Response') as guitarist and visual vj and with his own group Chucknee, who recently released their seventh album “Strange Tale From East of the River”.
Liz Young Liz’s greatest musical moment was receiving $100 from one listener for playing Fur Elise whilst busking. A close second to this was winning the University of Queensland’s Sleath string performance prize. When Liz isn’t playing for deepblue you might find her running up a mountain, dancing Argentine tango, drinking billy tea around a gas stove with friends in the local park, telling scary almost-going-down-a-waterfall-upside-down-under-a-kayak stories, talking about Jesus or floating down a creek on a lilo.
What do Liz, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley all share in common? They all grew up playing their instruments and singing in church.
How does Liz achieve her vivacious curls, you ask? Simply twirl small sections of wet hair around 2 fingers and pin to head with bobby pin (makes approx 50-60 curls). Once dry, take out bobby pins, separate the curls, hair spray and enjoy the bounciness!
Back stage
Andy Arthurs Andy wrote his first piece for orchestra at school in the 60s, “Piece of Sound” which involved a traditional orchestra but also pyrotechnics and woodwork. Andy began his professional career at AIR studios, London (1971-75) working with the Beatles' production team and, in particular, producer George Martin, assisting him on orchestral arrangements. He then went on to produce successful chart hits, as a producer, engineer, songwriter/composer and artist. He also worked in a mixed media group La Bouche, inspired by working with John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Luciano Berio.
In 1991 he went ‘legit’ and moved to Australia, eventually becoming Professor of Music at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He has written on and researched in music, served on many boards including The Queensland Orchestra, The Australia Council and the Prime Minister’s Music Education Advisory Group. On meeting Darren Clark he felt he had met someone who was always asking the right questions. Deepblue is really an extension of what he started at school - except, to everybody’s relief he no longer plays trombone.
Darren Clark Darren has worked in senior management roles in lots of industries, including 17 years in the music, entertainment & hospitality industries (although he still looks really young don't you think?). He has held board and advisory positions on over a dozen private companies and government organizations. He has represented clients ranging from five star hotels and casinos to film companies, national retailers, entertainers, sports personalities, large outdoor concert events and probably a lot of less glamorous jobs he won't mention here.
He is a regular speaker at universities and conferences in Australia and abroad, particularly in the fields of audience development and international marketing for the Arts and is very passionate and colorful presenter. He is currently a Director of a number of companies including Creative Media Warehouse and Knoego Consulting. Darren participates on the creative development team of deepblue and oversees the business development. He also has really cool awards and posters and stuff hanging in his office. He used to be a drummer but we don't hold that against him.
Fiona Cullen Fiona is part of the Deepblue creative team. From 1978-1991 Fiona was a professional dancer in Australia, the UK and Europe. She did a range of work, both commercial and contemporary, from opera to independent dance companies. In 1984 she was a founding member of La Bouche in London, a mixed-media music/dance/video group (signing to Safari Records and CBS/Sony). Since 1991 Fiona has taught at QUT Creative Industries as well as guest teaching for various visiting dance companies (Bangarra, DV8, Chunky Move). More recently she has developed her photographic skills and has been able to further explore the rich language of dance and performance through photography, combining the two areas to specialise in performance photography. Fiona has exhibited her work at the Brisbane Powerhouse, the Judith Wright Arts Centre, Glass Bar and the Australian Choreographic Centre in Canberra. Her images have been viewed in numerous publications including The Guardian, UK, Dance Australia and Dance Forum.
Keith Hawley Keith Hawley does not appear the archetypal dancer/choreographer. Tall, broad shouldered, and with a cheeky grin, he has been known to take rehearsals in board shorts, baggy t-shirt and runners, encouraging the dancers with cried of "Wow! That's fabosaurus!" But his casual demeanour belies an inner drive and determination that has seen him succeed in an industry that destroys more ambitions than in nurtures.
Carlie Svensson Carlie has worked in HR and corporate communication for 18 years in both SME's and Government. Carlie has been responsible for managing large scale client communications, recruitment, and Multi-department Government call centres. Under the Knoego Consulting umbrella, she brings to Deep Blue an innovative approach to leading our team development.
She's one of the few people who can keep Andy and Darren under control and it's a wonder she has time for anything else. Although her taste in music leaves something to be desired she is the best reader of people we've ever seen.
Carlie's favourite Quote: "People will forget what you said and what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou |
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