​When did you first meet and what were your first impressions of each other?
 
Tina: Well I met Wes at birth. His birth, not mine, he is my nephew so that would be odd, but not impossible I guess. Anyway, it was actually the day after his birth that I saw him for the first time. He was a chubby glowing thing. Or was that your brothers birth Wes? Oh who knows or cares, do you have any more wine? This glass ain’t gonna fill itself!  
 
Wes: My first real memory of Aunt Tina was when I was 9 she took me behind our old garden shed and showed me how to roll a joint.
 
Tina: Well you have to learn sometime. No one wants to smoke a flacid doob. You know Wes your mother always said she was expecting a girl because she was experiencing wild mood swings, breakouts and oily skin, excessive morning sickness and was carrying quite high. But it turns she was just giving birth to a bohemian.

When did you know that you wanted to be a musician? 
I didn’t actually plan to! After high school I did a one-year course in jazz at WAAPA as a gap year, and it has just continued. I was having so much fun I just decided to keep doing it.
What was your first instrument?
My first instrument was piano, I think I was 3 when I started. Mum said I used to make things up and get really into it and drool on the piano keys. Nothing has changed. 
I went on to play cello for a few years, dabbled in violin and viola and then took up saxophone in high school.
What is the strangest music gig/job that you’ve done?
I was the music director on an Australian-idol style reality tv-show that was on community tv. It was definitely strange. 
What is the strangest non-music job you’ve ever done?
In my first summer after finishing school, my brother and I worked in a recycling factory sorting the glass and the paper from the general trash. It was very hot and very smelly, but it paid well. I have been very diligent about what I put in the recycling bin ever since. 
Now I work in a surf shop in between my music commitments. It’s great. 
Tell us about the music you have composed for TLSQ:
It’s for string quartet and fixed media. I asked TLSQ to come into the studio and individually recorded them playing a few gestures and notes and a lot of harmonics. I then manipulated those string sounds to make the fixed media part.
 
 I’m really into writing music based on aspects of natural phenomena. I love the ocean and getting out of the city and it gives me an excuse to do that while ‘composing’. The piece is called Nautical Twilight. At twilight there is this overall sense stillness, the light changes slowly. But on a micro level there is lots of busyness and activity. Crepuscular animals and insects become active at twilight. So I took aspects of this and the concept of macro slow change with micro activity and applied it to the music. The harmony moves really slowly, but there is a lot of interaction and activity within the ensemble. I had a lot of fun making the score. There are aspects of improvisation and it really requires the ensemble to listen and interact. I wrote it especially for TLSQ as they do this kind of music so beautifully. 

On Sunday April 23rd, 2017, 6pm, TLSQ will be performing a set of all Australian Works at the Hawthorn Arts Centre. Included in the programme is old wounds by Wally Gunn, from his string quartet work, Blood. Wally has had an interesting journey in music; from being a singer/songwriter pop star to a sought after composer of theatre, film and concert works. Wally lives in Queens, New York but still maintains strong ties to the Melbourne music scene. Read on for an insight into this man of the world. Check out Wally's own website HERE and then book tickets for our Hawthorn Arts Centre show HERE.

When did you know that you wanted to be a musician? 
In 1984, when I was 12 years old, the ABC broadcast an original Australian drama series called ‘Sweet and Sour,’ about a rock band trying to make it big in Sydney. It starred Tracy Mann with a shock of punky, asymmetrical hair as the singer and songwriter Carol, who led the band The Takeaways. Deborah Conway provided Carol’s vocals on the soundtrack. Before that series, I had sung along in harmony to Linda Ronstadt LPs, and danced by myself to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, and started to wonder how music was put together after listening to The Human League’s incredible album ‘Dare.’ But I hadn’t thought about being a musician. All that changed when I saw Carol on ‘Sweet and Sour.’ I wanted to be a rock star just like her.
What was your first instrument?
All throughout my childhood I made up ‘pieces’ on the family piano, but never took lessons. Neither did I have singing lessons, but I taught myself to harmonize and yodel. The first formal music lessons I had were for clarinet from the age of 11. I was a poor student who never practiced. The first time I really dedicated myself to an instrument was when I picked up a guitar at 16.
What is the strangest music gig/job that you’ve done?
My stint playing keyboards in nothing but underpants in a raucous queer new-wave punk disco band was probably the strangest music job I’ve done, and it was also the most fun.
What is the strangest non-music job you’ve ever done?
For a year I was a waiter and llama feeder at the café of a lavender farm in the Goldfields District of Western Victoria.