Neither Chris, nor myself (Leona), are much for biographies, but I hope this gives you a little insight.
I took Chris to Europe, very spontaneously, where he asked me out on a midnight walk along an empty beach, the sunlight dropping low to the horizon. It was just us, at the edge of the world. We had already been signing off our messages with ‘Husband’ and ‘Wife’ for a decade, so I said: yes.
The trip away from the grind of every day was opportune to consider the forks in life that present themselves, sometimes with a force not arguable, and sometimes so obscured they need to be fought for. Three weeks after returning to home soil, Chris sustained a concussion. Three weeks after that, I walked in to Byron Theatre and organised a show for him. His debut. For his own original work on an actual piano. My dad asked if I walked in with a wheelbarrow of cash considering Chris was unknown as a solo artist, had no social media profile, no local following, and we had absolutely zero promotional material.
The good folk at Byron Theatre took our wheelbarrow of cash and helped us put together a great night (thank you!). And thank you to the wonderful people of the Northern Rivers who were there that night to make Chris’s long-held dream reality. It meant an enormous amount. Still battling with post-concussion symptoms including a loss of sense of rhythm, timing, and focus, Chris had 8 weeks to put together a show. Here is the result, filmed on mobile due to a slew of technical failures that night.
His mother’s exclamation during the intermission: “I didn’t know he could sing!”
“I knew I liked playing, but this dot shit in front of me never clicked.”
Being the youngest of four, he was the last to begin piano lessons at the wise age of six. Luckily for Chris, he had a lovely piano teacher for several years. While she may have grappled with his lack of sheet reading or practice, it was on her recommendation that a piano, an actual piano, was brought in to the house. An upright ex-conservatorium Kawai that has now been Chris’s companion for over 20 years. After a sabbatical from playing in his early teenage years, Chris proceeded to self-teach while his siblings left the keys behind.
Throughout adolescence and adulthood, the hammers have been the expression, and resolution of his emotions and his soul (he will cringe to read this). My mother put it well, when we traveled to Europe for two months. She asked how he would cope, as she imagined it to be painful to be separated from the instrument whose relationship is akin to breathing. He managed. Mostly because we found pianos in unlikely places. With broken keys on overnight vessels in the Cretan sea, in law research institutes in Germany, in small back room chapels with yellow walls and biblical tapestries hanging in every corner while spiked coffee was served, and in a school classroom of a remote island where access was taken ‘the long way’ due to fear of doors falling off rusted hinges.
When pianos were hard found, guitars proved to be an available second option. As a side note, many of Chris’s songs are first written on guitar, and then later shifted to the piano. While the piano is his favoured instrument, he claims: “I don’t know what I’m doing on the guitar. Sometimes I’ll play something and think ‘that sounds interesting’.” Less constricted by “should”s or theoretical knowledge.
For the eight years preceeding the pandemic, Chris played in a slew of bands cover and original alike manning the keyboard and guitar, but never his favoured instrument: The Piano (Yes, I opt to write this in capital letters, as that which the noun is a placeholder for is regal, and epic, and enduring, and real). He toured the east coast of Australia, India, New Zealand with these bands.
There is, however, a distinct difference between a keyboard and a Piano. A keyboard, or an electric piano, no matter how much they might sound like the ‘best’ piano in the world, ultimately produce a digital sound. A Piano is a percussive instrument. With a visceral oompf behind hammers hitting strings.
So the Byron debut was important. It was the first time Chris was to perform his own original songs on an actual Piano. We continue to thank Norm Appel who sourced the Piano decades prior and has continued to look after it with the care that comes from a love and respect of the intimate connection between player and instrument. The secret, you see, is electrical signals. From the brain to the fingers (Thank you, jazz pianist Tony from Sanday for imparting this wisdom). Only through the quality of care put in to an instrument, can those electrical signals take their elusive form.
Shortly after I moved in with Chris, I stopped listening to music. Because every day I get to listen to him grace the keys in our apartment while our fellow residents trundle up and down the stairs. Every day is different. Most of the time it is an ‘expressive moment’. I hesitate to use the word ‘improvisation’, even if that is what it is.
Sometimes a song I recognise the shape of will shimmer through, albeit with a few extra notes. He claims it’s only that way because he ‘butchers’ them, or, as often happens, he ‘can’t remember how it goes’. This includes his own songs. We are lucky if we find a scrap of paper with the lyrics and the key on it.
