Where are they now – Joshua Hyde (SPC 1999-2004)

We were thrilled to welcome back Old Collegian Joshua Hyde (SPC 1999-2004) to the College’s Chapel last Sunday for a fabulous performance with the Australian Saxophone Quartet (ASxQ). After a successful run across Asia, the quartet comprising four of Australia’s leading saxophonists, have brought their music back to Australia and for Josh, this trip to Ballarat was a special homecoming. Josh, who was the inaugural recipient of the College’s Young Achiever Award in 2014, kindly sat down with us prior to his Ballarat show to share more about where his life has taken him since leaving St Patrick’s in 2004.

Where has life taken you since leaving SPC?

I moved to Melbourne to study after my VCE here. I studied at the Victorian College of the Arts – Music and from there, I’ve been all over the world performing, teaching and doing all kinds of projects. I play saxophone so I’ve studied saxophone in Australia and in France and since then, I’ve been a teacher, I’ve taught in Brussels at the Royal Music Conservatory and I’ve taught in Vienna and in Austria.

I am currently Professor at the Geneva Music University and I teach there a couple of days a week and the rest of the time, I do projects here and there with different groups in France, I also play with a group in Cologne, Germany and another one in Montreal and in a group called Elision in Australia, predominantly focusing on new music.

The Australian Saxophone Quartet (ASxQ) is a group which existed when I was studying my undergraduate degree in Melbourne and each of us went our separate ways and a couple of years ago, we had the idea of getting back together and playing some Australian music together. Joseph (Lallo), Yo-yo (Su) and I all played together. Joseph went to study in France, Yo-yo went to study in France and Amsterdam and the United States and our tenor saxophone player had gone to New York to play jazz. So Mary (Osborn) is from Sydney, she is studying in France as well and so we got together and got most of the band back together.

Through the support of the Australia Council for the Arts, which has generously funded the project, we’ve had performance opportunities in Asia and Sydney and Melbourne and we thought it would be good to do something original and get back to our roots, so here we are.

(Read more about the ASxQ  and find out where else they are playing in August by clicking here)

 

Do you have family ties with SPC?

Not really, just me.

What are your fondest memories of your time at St Patrick’s College?

I guess my fondest memories are doing the subjects that I really enjoyed and still enjoy today, so music. We had lots of band tours. It was a really great learning environment in the band program that was run by Mr (Jamie) Ransome at that time.

So we would do the band competitions and go on band tours and band festivals and that was always really special. We used to compete in the Ballarat South Street Competitions and the Bands Festival in Melbourne at the Robert Blackwood Hall at Monash (University) and we also went to Adelaide, the Gold Coast one year and Tasmania another year. Every two years we would go to interstate festivals.

I’d been playing the piano and music theory in primary school and it went to the next level when I came to St Pat’s. There were some really great teachers here at the time.

Mr (James) Maddocks was teaching drama and he also taught me jazz piano and Mr (Tim) Ryan was here as well. Mr (Nick) Williamson was also here, so there were some really inspiring teachers here when I was a student.

 

Which teacher from your time at SPC had the greatest impact on you? Why?

They (the teachers above) really inspired me to go further and it was a really supportive environment. I also had a really great time in the media department with Mr (Peter) Hutchins and also in the art department with Mrs (Melissa) Griffin.

So visual arts, media and music were my favourite parts of being here at St Pat’s.

How has your education shaped your professional life?

It’s an interesting question – are we drawn to subjects that we are good at and that education shapes things or are we exposed to things we wouldn’t have known? I’m never really sure if the reason I went towards music and visual arts is because that was what I was good at and that becomes your professional life or if that was sparked here (at SPC). I’m not really quite sure, it’s a very interesting melting pot of all sorts of different subjects and ideas.

There was also a Literature teacher, Mr (Ian) McKail, he was a very inspiring teacher as well.

When I was here, I studied French, music, media, visual arts, psychology and English literature.

I work professionally in French every day. It’s the language I speak every day. I teach music, I use media to make video and films for what I do and teaching is psychology, so all the subjects I learnt at St Pat’s have helped me in my life.

 

How has your time at SPC shaped your personal values and your family life?

The values at St Pat’s are really important to me, supporting people and the social justice aspect have always been really important for me and my career and giving opportunities to those who wouldn’t normally have had them otherwise, trying to equalize some of the societal differences in the ways that you are able to, which I think is really super important, especially with those social justice angles.

 

If you could pass on one message to the students of today, what would it be?

That’s a hard question, as an educator and that’s part of my role, as an educator, is we can tell students how it was before and how it is currently, but we have no idea what it’s going to be like in the future, so they have to trust themselves as much as anyone else to figure it out what their lives are going to be and we’re just doing our best to help them.

 

To read more about Josh’s life and love of music, please click here