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Rodney Waterman

 
Rodney Waterman is a performer, teacher and composer who specialises in the recorder. He studied with Kees Boeke in Italy and Holland in the mid-1980s. His repertoire is eclectic, including early, folk and contemporary and Brazilian music, with a particular interest in improvised music. He has performed and tutored widely in Australia and New Zealand including numerous major Festivals.

In January 2000 Rodney performed and tutored at the Australian Call of the Four Winds Festival  in Armidale NSW. In January 2002 he was a guest tutor and performer at the New Zealand Winds of Waitaha Festival. In January 2005 Rodney performed and tutored at the International Steps In Time Festival of Recorder and Dance in Armidale NSW. Rodney was the director of the Festival Children's Summer Activity Program.

In 1984 in Italy he taught music at the scuole elementari di Pitigliano (Pitigliano Primary School). In Melbourne, from 1997 until May 2004, he taught ensemble and classroom music at Fitzroy North Primary School. He was the Music Co-ordinator at Preston Girls Secondary College in Melbourne from 2004-7. In 2008 Rodney teaches music at Preshil in Kew, Melbourne. He has also been a long term activist in the environment movement.

Rodney is particularly interested in exploring through improvisation, the intrinsic and fundamental beauty of the essentially simple 'woody' tonal qualities of the recorder, ultimately aiming to discover more of the ‘soul’ and the ‘spirit’ of the instrument. This has led to recent collaborations with jazz players Ben Robertson (double bass) and Doug De Vries (guitar), Tony Lewis (percussion) and shakuhachi master, Riley Lee. A number of Rodney's recorder compositions, such a Leviathan (1987) are inspired by the shakuhachi. His recorder playing also  features on the soundtrack of the television movie Witch Hunt (Columbia, Golden Square Pictures) released in the USA and Australia in 1999. In 1997/98 Rodney had the privilege of working for the late Fred Morgan in Daylesford, Victoria. He worked two days a week testing new recorders.

In 1998 Rodney released an innovative CD (Agua e Vinho - Orpheus Music OM201) of Brazilian contemporary music (Gismonti, Pascoal), folk and original music, with Melbourne jazz guitarist Doug De Vries. They appeared at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in March 1999. A new and expanded version (4 bonus tracks, 18 mins extra music) of Água e Vinho was  released (11/2000) on Egberto Gismonti's Carmo/ECM label (CARMO/14). The CD is distributed and marketed worldwide by ECM records Munich.

In January 2007 Rodney presented a tribute performance to Australian jazz recorder player Ade Monsbourgh with Michael McQuaide's Late Hour Boys at the Eltham Jazz Festival. At the 2008 Festival  he performed with Australian jazz pianist, Joe Chindamo.

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