Steve is an elected (2019) full writer member of Australian Performing Rights Association Ltd (APRA / AMCOS) and in 2021 was awarded Associate Membership of the Australian Music Centre. He is also a member of Music Tasmania.

2022 sees Steve entering new musical directions and partnerships; first, extending his collaborations with Monique Brumby - this time co-writing “Good Night My Friend”, Monique’s leave-taking and salute to her “Thylacine House” studio in 2021. It’s an honour and steep learning curve working with a double ARIA award winner, but Monique is again generous and forgiving as we start to build a new set of work around environmental, social and personal themes.

Late in 2021, Steve started working with jabralathammusic.com on piano and small ensemble / orchestral arrangements of 12 of his compositions (some old / new). These will be recorded and released as a series of EPs starting with three tracks from Steve’s two albums with Bob Brown, who has had input into the arrangements. Recording is planned for the first half on this year, CV-19 allowing. The 2nd EP will include a piece (About To Rain) Steve composed with his eldest grandchild, Liam, one afternoon when they were improvising duets on the piano whilst sheltering from an impending storm; and a piece co- written with hugely multi-talented and proud Gidja/Kimberley and Tasmanian woman Naarah through improvising around the lyrics of a Pablo Neruda poem.

Another new direction followed recently was composing two soundtracks Rondo and Bookends for the AAFIE podcast series, and providing soundtrack music (variations on Yathiny from his Unbroken album) for a UTAS video, as well as for a Restore Pedder 3D animation that will be part of events planned for the 50th Anniversary of the flooding of the real Lake Pedder that will occur throughout 2022.

Having participated in three Tasmanian music festivals in 2021, Steve was booked to accompany Monique Brumby for the “Earth Celebration” event at the Cygnet Folk Festival in January 2022 that had to be cancelled due to the outbreak of the CV-19 Omicron variant that threatens to derail other planned festivals, disrupting again the lives and careers of many musicians, roadies, caterers and others associated with live music.

One other development in the pipeline is being invited to be part of a new project “Floating Scores” that is being planned as a state-wide geo-located sonic public art event across Tasmania from 2022. “Floating Scores” is planned as a digital (App-based) audio platform building a Tasmanian soundscape produced by Frances Butler (aka Gap In The Fence) under the auspices of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. The project focuses on our relationship to landscapes - what we invest in it, obtain from it, and how we communicate this (musically) to others. Fingers crossed - this sounds great!

Backstory

Steve began playing piano when he was 3 years old, coming home from watching his older sisters learn ballet and tapping out some bits of the ballet tunes on a toy 1 octave red grand piano - a ‘party trick’ he still revels in. One of 4 children in a working class family, his parents none-the-less scraped together enough money for piano lessons and a basic piano. By chance, his mother’s uncle was a piano restorer and when Steve started to show a glimmer of promise, he was taken over to ‘Uncle Alan’s’ place where there was a huge garage full of pianos waiting to be repaired. In a gesture of unbound graciousness and progressive parenting, Steve was asked to walk around and play as many as he liked and decide which one he wanted. He chose a beautiful Beale pianola, with a large steel back that produced a concert-hall reverb encased in a beautiful cabinet, that he kept for over 50 years.

Various musical adventures followed. The option to complete senior school at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music was seriously considered, but this was the late 60’s and life seemed too good to commit to doing scales all day. None-the-less, on and off over the years, Steve put to tape about 90 songs, tunes and melodies, few getting any public performance. Approaching 60 years old in 2011, he decided it was time to use the technology now available to ‘put out’ a budget CD to family and friends. Brian Lizotte, of Lizottes’ Live’N’Cooking fame, kindly played some over the PA at his Kincumber restaurant for that birthday celebration dinner.

Musical adventures tend to build on each other including being invited out of the rain in NYC by the barman of “The Bitter End” and being allowed on stage to play the piano where so many greats have performed. Steve also spent a few days in and out of “12 Tonar” records in Reykjavik, getting to learn more about Icelandic music and, over coffee in Mokka just down the street, being encouraged by the founder, manager and researcher, Johannes Agustsson to get some of his stuff done the Icelandic way - not to hesitate or worry about what might come of it.

The Head of the Newcastle University Conservatorium of Music, Professor Richard Vella, an innovative and prominent musician, also encouraged Steve to play and record, pushing him to add more variation, offering himself as a critical friend and guiding Steve to better understand the musical heritage of what he was attempting. Through a chance meeting at the Darwin Festival, Balang (Tom E Lewis) invited Steve to come to Katherine and spend time at the Djilpin Art Gallery there and at Wugullarr just inside Arnhem Land. Four of the songs on “Midnight Rain” derive from those experiences.

Another chance meeting, this time with Heath Cullen when he performed a lunchtime concert at Basement Discs in Melbourne for his 2nd CD, ‘The Still and The Steep”, triggered a gut feeling in Steve that here was a musical soul mate who could help him get down the sounds he was reaching for. Heath’s thoughtful, sensitive and skilful production of “Midnight Rain” expresses the generosity and inspiration of being part of something bigger than yourself, a metaphor for Candelo community which is rich in like-minded and amazingly talented musicians, artists and actors.

As Steve started to put more time and energy into his music, as a consequence of all the above, three other people offered help and inspiration, through Chris Lee's Wholenote Publishing’s help with transcription of messy improvisations and through ReesDigital beautiful graphic design of the sheet music as well as artwork of the ”Midnight Rain” CD packaging. Pat Monaghan, ex-Basement Discs, now heading his own show at Rocksteady Records, champion of Independent music, Triple R interloper and Finders and Keepers market DJ didn't hesitate to stock my CD.

Since then, and now living in Tasmania, Steve has forged a collaboration with Dr Bob Brown, Australia’s most respected environmentalist, producing 2 albums of Steve’s music put to 14 poems Bob wrote in the 1970s. The albums, “Winter Night At Liffey” and ”Hidden Vale” have received broad acclaim and a number of performance videos are included on this website. As noted above, Steve and Monique Brumby have developed a deep musical friendship and performed their collaborations together at, for example, the 2021 Festival of Voices, Songs of Tasmania Project event at the Theatre Royal, Hobart, where Monique stole the show with “Walk That Beach Again”, a powerful plea to restore Lake Pedder (see Video webpage). As 2022 unfolds, Steve and Naarah are looking to extend their improvisations around words and song - two examples can be found on the video webpage. Tasmania has such a rich music scene with a camaraderie hard to match.

In 2022 and 2023, Steve worked with Jabra Latham on orchestral arrangements of his piano pieces, many of which were written to express the emotions and insights of a selection of Bob Brown’s poems; as well as a number of other sources of inspiration. This resulted in a CD/DVD release, “Considering Life” that won favourable reviews (see Reviews page) and one of the tracks, ”Winter Night At Liffey”, was included on the soundtrack of a major cinema release “The Giants”, shown in more than 50 cinemas around Australia - running for more than 15 consecutive weeks in Hobart, Melbourne and Adelaide cinemas. On Sunday 30 July, 2023, the musicians gathered again in the TSO Studio in Hobart to record 6 new pieces: some additional expressions of Bob’s poetry, and others more generally about life and love. One, “Unbroken (Lake Pedder)” is dedicated to Christine Milne, who was present at the recording, delighting the musicians who gave deeply moving performances again. Steve’s life, and expressions in music, have always had connections to Nature and it is a great honour to also connect his music to the environmental achievements and legacy of Bob and Christine, with their blessing.