Musical Background & Music Links

Please come and visit Keyboard Player

My Music

Mixed genre of music from 1920's - Big Band Swing, Jazz, Latin, Romance, Dance, Musicals, Featuring Yamaha  Genos, Yamaha CVP 709, Piano and Vocals

I have been performing concerts since July 2008 in South West London, Surrey, East Hampshire and West Sussex. I have state of the art sound equipment with a professional stage sound system, Bose L1 Compact Model, which produces high quality sound.

I have played at Student Master Classes at the Hindhead Music Centre and my compositions have been performed in Guildford Cathedral and also on Classic FM over a four year period.

I play both the piano and keyboard and perform vocals with the new Yamaha Genos TRX, which is Yamaha's flagship keyboard - an incredibly exciting instrument, which can produce stunning effects.

I have Logic Pro X software plus various orchestral programmes such as Garage Band, Main Stage,  and Komplete Ultimate Bundle. This has allowed me to explore the art of orchestration and I am enjoying the challenge of learning how to do this.

I have perform a diverse programme of music on my top of the range, professional keyboards playing a wide selection of music genre. In addition, the extensive repertoire includes music from the Shows and Musicals and a great many popular melodies from the Great American Song Book. Some of these are original arrangements and all come fully orchestrated with Big Band settings.

The extensive song library featuring professional vocal backing tracks and these are performed with Stage Sound Bose L1 Compact Model system.

I have played at a variety of venues and clubs for various occasions and my repertoire features c. 2,000 commercial backing tracks,  

​

I completed a four year recording contract with Empire Recording Studios resulting in three albums now available on multiple online download stores, including Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Shazam etc - MOMENTS,   MOMENTS TO REMEMBER &   MOMENTS OF ROMANCE

My Musical Journey

I started piano lessons, aged 7, with a very prim and utterly humourless teacher called Miss Butler. She wore a severe grey bun and spectacles, held very rigid views and was unable to comprehend my ability at such a young age to memorise all that was put before me and my desire to bash out a tune for enjoyment. Subsequently complaining to my Mother, who sugested that perhaps she should teach me something more interesting like jazz, for instance was met with outrage – hence the early demise of those lessons!

However, I still love to play by ear. During the twelve years we lived in London, I joined the Kensington Symphony Orchestra having learned the violin at school. We performed many concerts including one in Smith Square, London that was broadcast on Radio 3 for the premier performance of Elgar's Piano Concerto. I also joined the Philbeach Society for a number of years performing in amateur operatic shows at The Barbican and Ealing. (photos of me in a Pop Opera and Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers).

We moved down to Surrey nearly 30 years ago, I took up piano again and also joined the Surrey Police Choir with whom I sang for 13 years. I have played at Student Master Classes at the Hindhead Music Centre in Surrey and my own compositions have been performed in Guildford Cathedral and also on National radio (Classic FM) over a four year period.

I became critically ill  21 years ago and now I am largely housebound, so being able to share my music globally is a great privilege for me. 

I am one of the administrative team for Keyboard Player, an online music forum where those who play the piano, organ and any type of keyboard can share their music - and this is a daily pleasure, which keeps me pretty busy!

In spite of my life changing in ways that I could never have envisaged, with the support of my loving husband and children and never ending encouragement from all my friends, and others out in the community, even through counselling, I have discovered many things that I am now able to do with drastically changed personal circumstances with the music, art, cookery book, website design. In addition, I am now writing a book, as described above, as well as now giving singing lessons, it really is possible to re-invent the wheel!

I had the privilege of performing concerts for eleven years as a vocalist locally with themed, flexible and diverse programes with more than 80 different concert programmes, which are constantly work in progress!    This music is now still being recorded and is being added to the Jukeboxes, above.

I had the privilege of working with Empire Recording Studios over four years recording three albums -  MOMENTS, MOMENTS TO REMEMBER AND MOMENTS OF ROMANCE launched on iTunes, Amazon and other global download stores - information about this can be found under ALBUMS, above.

​

My Musical Instruments

I have the Yamaha Flagship Genos digital arranger workstation, which is now coupled with the TRX system and also CVP 809PE.

​

I joined the Yamaha Club in 2007 who have been a fantastic resource for technical knowledge for all things musical and have attended their annual Events. I have also had a number of articles published in their bi-monthly magazine.

I use these instruments with Logic Pro X, together with various excellent software programmes.

I also love to sing and have about 2,000 commercial backing tracks as well as my own arrangements. I started up my music business in 2007, initially with another musician and to date have performed more than 300  concerts throughout Surrey.

​

Susie with Judy Short - a very special friend and huge musical influence and together we have created some wonderful collaborations.

​

Our music can also be found on Keyboard Player

- see further info below.

Keyboard Player

Keyboard Player is an exciting Keyboard Forum, Organ and Piano Club For Keyboard Music Creators and Listeners newly launched in August 2014.

The forum was created by Barry Cowles and is jointly administrated together with Judy Short from USA.

I am a Moderator of this Forum and anyone interested in having a look at this fun forum, which has an active global membership.

I now head up both the Instrumental and the Vocal Challenges, which is proving to be very popular and showcasing the amazing talents of KP members.  We have a great team who manage the monthly  Challenges for all different aspects of music and we try to be innovating and interesting.

​

https://www.keyboard-player.org.uk

​