“According to my parents who are conservative in every other way, I was conceived in Vienna and I am the reason they had a long honeymoon. They were travelling around Europe in a Campervan. Dad had won a lot of money on his horses which he owned and bred. They stuffed the money into a pillowcase and he said to my mum…you can have one month in luxury or we can buy a camper van and we can have 9 months travelling. My mother took the 9 months. They landed in Vienna and saw these stallions perform and the rest is history. My mother was terribly ill with me in Greece so they came back to Coonamble which is where my parents were living.
My dad was on the race track and in those days you didn’t really know when you were conceived or your due date. Mum was down in Sydney visiting her sister and a phone call came over the race track, ‘Mr Leonard, Congratulations, you have a son and heir’ The champagne flowed and Dad went down to Sydney to meet his son. Well, Mrs Hennard had given birth to a boy and Mrs Leonard had a girl and that would be me. I was a month early. There were 2 suitcase under the bed. One had old clothes for Vinnies and the other had the babies clothes and mums stuff and he took the wrong bag as well. My Dad’s name was Michael so I became Michelle and when they finally had a son my brother became Michael. So it’s really creative naming there.
They had nothing organised for my birth and it was weird because my parents were such organised people. I slept the first month of my life in a washing basket. My dad picked up the wrong bag to take to the hospital. My mum had the baby bag and the bag for the op shop and he grabbed the op shop one. It wasn’t an auspicious start.
I went to the local Catholic School, now called St Brigid’s with the Brigidine Nuns and they were formidable feminists. I look back and I think Oh my Lord, I had quite a creative education there. They were way before their time and that was wonderful. I did 2 years at Coonamble High which made me connect to the town I had grown up in. I didn’t necessarily get an academic education but I got a robust life education. It was pretty wild so at 13 when I arrived at Normanhurst Boarding School I didn’t really care that the girls weren’t very kind. I didn’t want to go back to Coonamble as I really wanted to learn. I wanted to have music opportunities and the difference was huge. I ended up finding a group of daggy intellectuals and off we went.
My mother was a wonderful pianist and my fathers parents met in the old black and white theatre playing for the movies and she was a wonderful violinist. Mum pursued music and she wanted us to have more opportunity than they both had. All 4 of her children played piano and we all had to learn a second instrument. My Mum came from a Greek heritage and was quite ostracised so I think she had quite a drive to ensure we would not be ostracised. Dad had that classic Irish..degrees, degrees, degrees! We had to get degrees. He only had an opportunity to go to Year 4 but he was accelerated as he was brilliant at Maths. I look back on it now. We were like a well run machine. Mum had 2 pianos and everyone was rostered on. You did an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon and you did that 7 days a week and on the instruments preferably. You did your homework in between. Mum was balancing work as well and Dad just let it all happen. You don’t get to do what I do now unless you had that push behind you and it was a push. You had no option. By the time I got to Boarding school there were other girls who were doing even more. No-one had devices or iPhones back then so it was watch TV or practise.
Music wasn’t my best mark but I got into The Sydney Con on Piano, Clarinet and I did the education degree because I thought it best to eat. My sister said..I’m not doing Education. I’m a performer! And she is absolutely extraordinary. I was head of Music teaching when I was 21. I learnt how to manage staff and all that sort of thing. I went on to Newtown performing Arts and taught there. I put through a lot of people and thought I would stop for a while. In between all of that I did another degree because I thought I would leave music. I did a Masters in Communications at UTS. I thought I would do Philanthropy. As soon as I finished that degree music sort of hauled me back in. It does that! I ended up working at Sydney Children’s Choir before they became Gondwana Voices and toured overseas. It was a very rigorous musical environment.
In between time I got married and had Sofia so I was conducting around the place to earn money as you do. I then had Max and I had started Moorambilla Voices at that stage. I started it in Sydney, had a couple of iterations of it in Mudgee and then Justine Lawler and my friend Elizabeth Markey who has since passed on..you can beat many things but you can’t beat Pancreatic cancer yet…approached me and we had it in Coonamble for 9 years.
Moorambilla started with the primary boys choir, boys and men. The ABC made a doco calling it the Outback Choir and then it got to a movie called Wide Open Sky. In essence I needed to connect back to home. I would find the children in schools and bring them back to a camp site Barradine which only existed because the Olympics had just happened. They closed down the Pilliga scrub and these remarkable women had bought up some of the athletes village with this view that would run a campsite for people. It grew from one boys choir of 32 to double that when we rolled it the next year to a girls choir. We got the festivals grant so we had to create a festival for the choir to perform at. It’s all madness now but we did that. Within 3 years I had a massive festival, 2 small children and 3 big ensembles. No admin support so I did the thing that a lot of women do. I’d breastfeed, put them to sleep, you work, you juggle it all. Now it is this extraordinary thing. I had another adult choir which celebrates 20 years this year called The Leichhardt Espresso Chorus and they helped support these ensembles. The idea was for city to meet country and help provide pathways for some of these kids.
I’ve since had 2 more children. My husband and I lived in Salzburg for 18 months where we had Ignatius. We then had Sebastian in Sydney.
I am here in Lismore because Jyllie Jackson has asked us to help celebrate her 25th Lismore Lantern Parade next year. We are adding to a relationship that we have had for over 14 years. It’s incredibly exciting because Jyllie has asked us to work with her to create a concert prior to the Lantern parade. We will be working with the Conservatorium, primary and high school children. We will be bringing along our beautiful Australian hand made Taiko which are Japanese drums. We work with makers to make Australian ones. Our high school kids will create a new work with the big band and we will work with the primary kids who will also be lucky enough to join in the parade.
I love Lismore. I’ve never been here and it’s the best kept secret in Australia!”