ABOUT MARYANNE - Maryanne Piper - Clarinet, Saxophone, Composition

Originally from sunny Australia, clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Maryanne Piper studied at Queensland and Sydney Conservatories of Music, and later in Holland and Switzerland with the assistance of several scholarships. Further studies followed in the USA and Germany. She has been the recipient of university awards for academic excellence, fellowships and prizes.

Since 2002, Piper has performed, presented, taught, recorded for radio broadcast, film and CD productions, and has participated in artist residencies across four continents. A versatile performer, she has shared the stage with Don Byron (Blue Note Records), members of Bang on a Can (New York City), symphony orchestras, improvising orchestras, as well as an array of theatre projects, bands and ensembles ranging from classical to avant-garde contemporary to jazz and world music. Her children's theatre project - Theater KEKSE was selected by NRW Kultursekretariat (NRW Cultural Council) as part of their 'Children's Theater of the Month' programme 2013.

Her music is the embodiment of an endless wanderlust, a predominate passion since childhood. For Piper, music is not only an expressive means, but rather a functioning life form to synthesize the world we live in, interpret its people and more importantly establish genuine connections within this reality. Today she stands somewhere between worlds, between continents, somewhere between jazz, classical and world genres, between composed and improvised music, discovering links between our fellow man and his sound world.

Piper grew up on the road and has never really lost her sense of wanderlust. Perhaps it has something to do with the immense distances and geography of her native homeland, Australia. Perhaps it has something to do with a less than static family history. Born in Queensland 1980, her following stations went something like this: an early move from her city of birth (Ipswich) to the remote Australian bush. Creativity and curiosity were born out of isolation, producing everything from village concerts to theatre shows as weekend activities - local television at the time only had two channels. A seasonal change brought the extended family to a larger country town, Tamworth, in the New England region of New South Wales, where Piper took to cultural and educational opportunities like a fish to water. An all round achiever, she soon began to collect an array of academic and musical awards.

The Regional Conservatorium, as well as the town’s lively local music community (including a strict classical programme, as well as musicals, Jazz bands, orchetras, chamber music and choirs) were her first honing grounds. A chance meeting with her first formal teacher, English clarinettist Claire Cochrane, through an outreach scholarship scheme at the conservatorium quite became destiny. With Cochrane’s encouragement and recognition of her student’s innate talent, there became the beginning of a personal musical discovery that has continued to unfold. Music had always surrounded Piper somehow, however clarinet and then saxophone came at a much later age through a high school music programme.

"I still vividly remember standing in an old instrument storage room with Miss Cork at the local high-school surrounded by a cacophony of sound being very excited. I had a choice between flute, clarinet and trumpet. Flute was too girly at 13, trumpet a bit loud for the neighbours, so I suppose the clarinet chose me." Miss Cork was a wonderfully committed music teacher who was as crazy as her students, and Piper lapped up the enthusiasm. In just over three years, Piper had skipped through the grades, accelerated rapidly, won a full academic and music scholarship to attend a specialised private school for her senior years and played her way into intensive performance degrees at Queensland and Sydney Conservatories of Music.

American clarinettist Floyd Williams in Brisbane became her next mentor, recognising natural musical talent and endowing her with a strict, but solid technical grounding that she is grateful for today. Two university awards and speedy development led her to Sydney, where she finally completed her studies in the classical department, first under the tutelage of Mark Walton, and then Deborah de Graaf. It was also during her Sydney time that Piper became involved in arranging music for short films made by friends in film school - one of these friends actually went on to produce an oscar-winning film in 2014.

An overseas study sojourn during her Bachelor's degree took her to teachers at Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, Oberlin Conservtory, the University of Virginia, Rotterdam Conservatory, Arnhem Conservatory, the Royal College of Music London, as well as further private study in Los Angeles with Mitchell Lurie. In 2003, after some competition success and several well-endowed scholarships in hand, Piper left the shores of Australia and has since been resident in Europe. The International Huygens/Nuffic Scholarship from the Dutch government took her to The Netherlands to undertake soloistic studies, later moving on to Zürich, Switzerland for a period with Hans Rudolf Stalder.

While studying in The Netherlands, Piper was re-introduced to the world of Jazz from her teenage years through her student peers, who seemed to outnumber her in the sleepy Dutch city where she found herself stationed. A tete-a-tete experience of disparate musical worlds and unexpected personal circumstances eventually led her to Cologne, Germany where coincidence and fate collided quite ravishingly.

A chance meeting in an instrument shop gave her a telephone number and led her to pursue private saxophone studies again, as well as further her renewed love of Jazz and improvisation. A residency in North Adams, Massachusetts with New York ensemble Bang on a Can, and guest artists Don Byron and Iva Bittova that same year further engrained her new path. A period of hyper-activity continued with stints in Asia, Canada and the UK for orchestral, festival, studio, radio and film recording work, as well as further private study in Cologne, London, Boston and New York.

A teaching post later took her to the city of Wuppertal, just outside Cologne. A city she had never heard of before - let alone could pronounce, but one which became important in her musical development. This small post-industrial city nestled in surrounding green hills, offered the space, time and generous financial assistance to develop more extensive projects. It exposed her more intensively to the world of European free improvisation, as well as theatre due to the scene’s emphasis on interdisciplinary projects. Her theatrical arrangement skills were now re-developed, applying music to diverse settings.

It was here she founded Theater KEKSE - an award-winning children’s theatre project for young learners of English as a foreign language incorporating music, dance and theatre. Her Wuppertal station also gave her the freedom to invest the time needed to begin larger ventures such as Artpipes e.V. - a non-profit producing larger international co-operations in the realm of jazz, with a steady dose of educational outreach - an imperative for this musician. And later, the beginnings of Pied Piper Publications - a music publishing company, before moving up stream. Her current residency on the river Rhine gives her the mobility needed to continue artistic collaborations within Europe while commuting where possible to her homeland, some 17,000 kms south-east.

Piper’s project ‘Iter: A Beautiful Journey’ takes her back into the realm of pure music, blending jazz, improvised, world and classical influences. ‘Iter’ brings together memories of places past and present in a bid to weld disparate worlds together and create an aural home for today. As Piper admits, “for me music has never really been music for music’s sake. It has mostly had some sort of story-telling function. Or perhaps rather a method to process and put a lot of things together.”

Her sound seems to be almost intrinsically linked to her upbringing in the wide-open space of Down Under. In some ways, it is a part of herself that naturally comes to the fore. This point became clear after discussing a few Australian composers and musicians with a Dutch jazz journalist in a small cafe in Budapest. He had the same feeling. Definite virtuosity, however understated, and strong intention, coupled with a sensitive and selective musicality, bring her tales to life. What one also feels from her music is a warmth and openness of personality: a personality that is as open as the Australian outback, and has definitely left its trace on those met during travels from east to west. Her talent and work with children, along with her involvement in several education programmes and charities, is marked by her early upbringing in close-knit communities where each individual was a vital part of the township.

‘Iter: A Beautiful Journey’ serves as a collection of anecdotes that musically trace Piper’s family history, piecing together identities, routes taken, as well as stories of hope, loss, fulfillment and disappointment since 1855 when her German, Scottish and English ancestors stepped on board in Hamburg, Inverness and Dover to embark on their journeys to 'Terra Australis Incognita' in search of renewed life. Isn’t it uncanny how history repeats itself?

MARYANNE PIPER - MUSICIAN, COMPOSER, ARTIST

MARYANNE PIPER

A silken melody, whispered tones...

SHORT BIO

A SELECTION:

"far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

- Theodore Roosevelt

LONG BIO

off the beaten track...

trains, planes, buses & chance meetings

sounds like...

hamburg, inverness, dover, sydney cove...

Education, Qualifications

Prizes, Awards, Recognition

MARYANNE PIPER © 2023

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