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...

In these weird times, you’ll all be aware that group singing has been largely demonised—who thought a benign and healthy form of expression could suddenly become public enemy number 1?— and I find myself working on music at home alone and needing more of an outlet for...

My double CD gospel set was popular enough to finally sell out — but now the nine songs where I teach the parts are now available as digital downloads on my website: Each song title includes four separate mp3s to teach the SATB parts, and ends with a complete...