I’m running another Zoom session on CHOIR DIRECTING on Thursday August 26 2021, 6pm -7pm AEST./ 8pm-9pm NZ This is for all song leaders AND singers, so please join me for a Q&A around what we get up to when we find ourselves in front of a choir. How do we get the...

The Bend's We Disappear is selling steadily through online stores in NZ like Flying Out and Rockstuff - and our Facebook page is now a thing, so if you want to be notified about what the Bend gets up to, we would love you to hit the old Like button......

So it was a fabulous weekend workshop in Machans Beach, just out of Cairns, the steamy climate outside matched by the wildness and heat generated by the singers in the room. Thanks to Genevieve and Phil for the local knowledge & logistics, and thanks to all who...

After thirty ‘odd’ years, The BEND [Fane Flaws, Tony Backhouse and Peter Dasent] is delighted to announce that We Disappear, our album of songs written from selected poems by legendary NZ poet Sam Hunt, has finally manifested in the physical world. This strange...

After some wonderful workshops in Victoria (Castlemaine, Tallarook, Melbourne) & Brisbane—pockets of socially-distanced wall-to-wall joy—I'm happy to announce a new addition to the calendar: a weekend workshop in beautiful Machans Beach, just north of Cairns,...

OK, so my proposed workshops in northern NSW didn't go ahead...however, my optimism knows no bounds...Victoria workshops planned for March 18 / 20-21. Let's make it happen! https://www.tonybackhouse.com/events/ On the way down through northern Victoria, we'll have an...

I'm now selling some a cappella choral and quartet arrangements and other sheet music online at SheetMusicPlus.  I have created, in the last 30 years, around 300 songs and arrangements — pop, rock, gospel, solo guitar music and more, pretty much traditional and old...

I’m running a Zoom session on CHOIR DIRECTING on Sunday 21, 10am -11am AEST. This will be an informal discussion, Q&A etc. where, as a starting point, I’ll talk about what I’ve learned since the publication of my Freeing The Song book back in 2010. I will be...

Happy New Year, and greetings from Blau Schnorkel Studio in Sydney — and I hope for all of us that 2021 is less challenging a year than 2020. Last year I ran Zoom tutorials every Tuesday night, focussing on my usual repertoire: black gospel, South African gospel, but...

After 23 years, the Heavenly Light Quartet has finally got around to recording more of their favourite songs from their favourite genre. We got together in 1996 to explore the intricate, rhythmic and fiery songs by such seminal groups as the the Dixie Hummingbirds,...

In my giddy & impressionable university years I doted somewhat on musique concrète & Stockhausen, and even once played guitar in a Victoria University Music Department performance of Aus den sieben Tagen. I spent many hours home alone with a couple of tape...