So, we all hear it ... life is BUSY! There's no getting around it! We all seem to live at a crazy pace nowadays!
My life is chockablock! I have my beautiful Shirley and our two kids, Jessica and Ewan and our dog, Buddy, and we've got all those extra-curricular activities to taxi kids to like tennis, yoga, water polo, etc. I teach high school music five days a fortnight (7 next year), I teach singing and guitar after school, I run two fantastic weekly choirs - Men Wot Sing and Awesome Voices -  plus I'm working on the final stages of a comedy adult novel with a mate of mine as well as working on developing an awesome musical duo called The Bucket List with a young mate, Leigh Cross.

Life is busy - but it's very fulfilling!

On Tuesday this week at Alstonville High School, we ran our junior CAPA night (Creative And Performing Arts) and we had a fantastic time with it. The show ran smoothly, the acts - both musical and dramatic - were polished and well presented. It was a wonderful event that ran over two showings - we had a shorter matinee program for many of the local primary school kids and then ran the full show for the evening event. The school hall was beautifully decked out in works of art and textiles by many of our students. It was a great event all round.

One magical part of our CAPA presentations was watching my gorgeous daughter, Jessica, performing with two of her friends, Samina and Charlotte. They performed an original song as well as a couple of covers. They have a sweet and tight vocal harmony blend which sits perfectly on Jessica's finger-picked guitar and it is truly a pleasure to listen to. Here's a quick snap of the girls performing.

That'll do for now. Looking forward to catching up again very soon with another glimpse into the busy life of me!

Cheers, Simon

PS: Please feel free to comment!

It's going to be AWESOME!
This Friday night at Rous Unplugged, we'll be having our first ever Indigenous night. An entire program of all  indigenous performers will be dancing and playing and it's promising to be an incredible night. All proceeds wioll be donated to the Jarjum's Preschool fund for the upgrading of the Jarjum's Preschool in Goonellabah, Definitely one NOT to be missed.
There is a special price for the night - $2 per person or $5 per family.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Here's a look at the program for the night.

So ... I've decided that with all my different websites and all the many interesting musical and non-musical interests that make up my daily life, I'm going to focus on blogging about any and all of these aspects here, on my simonchate.com website.

We'll start with last night at my Men Wot Sing rehearsal in Coolangatta. Men Wot Sing - as many of you will know - is a comedy choir of about 10 blokes and we've been doing our thing for at least 15 years (that's how long I've been the musical director for!). We've done a bunch of great shows - toured New Zealand, performed at the  Woodford Folk Festival and a whole bunch of other places - and also done a bunch of live Facebook performances.

Last night we did a couple of live Facebook feeds, one was a silly one about bad lip syncing and Seagulls - the other was this one - a rough and ready look at our current political system! Post a comment if you'd like to let us know what you think! More blogs to come!

Ciao!

and Yep - It's been a long time coming! This phrase could sum up so much of my life these last couple of years!
I haven't done a blog entry for this website since January 18, 2014. (And www.simonchate.com is the main hub site of all my websites so it really should be my main focus!) 

I've done plenty of blog entries on my voice education website - The Singing Voice for my Recording Sessions - These are available here:
And I've done a few blog entries for my community choir, Awesome Voices - based in Alstonville, NSW, Australia.  These are available here:
And I've done one or two other blog entries in various other sites, as well. But ... I haven't really written anything here lately, and more and more I've been thinking that maybe this place - www.simonchate.com - should be the central point from which I blog!

And so it begins!

Since I wrote my first blog for this site, over two and a half years ago, such a lot of water has gone under the bridge. At the end of January, 2014, I hit the wall and was unable to continue as a music teacher in my school due to excessive anxiety brought about by workplace bullying. I needed some real time off to assess my situation and slowly put myself back together. This became my focus for these last two years and, I am pleased to say, that I'm now back at school and doing well - although life can still be very challenging at times! I have written of my journey with anxiety in my website: www.anxietyland.com.au.

During these last two years I have continued to work extensively with two choirs - Men Wot Sing and Awesome Voices, and these two choirs still bring me a great deal of satisfaction. More than anything, it is the people with whom I am singing that make such a difference in my life. These are good people, loyal friends and it is a pleasure to sing with them.

My first solo album, Reality Changes, is just now about complete. I've worked on this album for over 5 years now and I am just putting the finishing touches on it now. I was in the studio on the weekend and, after a successful session laying down a few more electric guitar tracks, I am at a point where I'll only need one or two sessions to complete the song and therefore the album. You can read all about Reality Changes here. As soon as I've completed all the 13 tracks (12 tracks plus one bonus instrumental track), I'll send them all to be mastered at Benchmark Mastering with Don Bartley. This is a BIG THING! I can't wait till it's done! Then I've just got to sort out the CD artwork - and we're done like dinner. I've got some good ideas for the CD artwork too.

STOP PRESS: I will be mastering Reality Changes with Don Bartley in January, 2017! Hooray!!

On top of this, I am spending more time writing as well. Not just music, but short stories, kids books and co-writing an awesome comedy adult fiction novel as well. It's been a challenging couple of years, but a very rewarding one as well!

Rous Unplugged - a monthly community performance night at Rous Mill, near Alstonville, NSW continues to thrive - we've raised almost $14,000 for the New Alstonville Preschool and are now saving money to build a new deck on our beautiful venue - Rous Mill Hall.

It is such a pleasure to be involved with the community in so many ways.

And to top it all off, I've been travelling in Europe with my partner, Shirley and our two kids Jessi and Ewan - we went to Scotland this past June and July to see our family and also spent a magnificent week getting back to my Nordic roots in Norway as well.

G'day folks, well, here it is! SimonChate.com has been officially born.

The purpose of this blog is to keep you up to the minute with where I'm at within my creative journey, across all platforms within it - private music tuition, performance, choir direction, Rous Unplugged, writing, website development, etc. 

Simon Chate Creative Enterprises was officially launched in May, 2014, although I've been teaching privately and doing all the same sorts of things for years. The name Simon Chate Creative Enterprises and the concept of freelance creativity are now in full swing.

How did it get started? I'd been teaching Music at high school on the North Coast for over eight years and in the early weeks of the 2014 school year, I found myself no longer able to function in the classroom. It was very intense and the only way I can describe it, is that teacher burn out smashed me sideways like an invisible semi-trailer! I had no real choice in the matter anymore. The thought of returning to school and the massive weight of responsibility and after-hours work that went with it, basically gave me feelings of panic. I couldn't do it anymore.

And so, where to now? After discussions with my principal and various others, I decided I needed to take at least the rest of this year off - 2014 - and focus on doing what made me happy - my own creativity-based business. And so I'm developing my performance setlist once again, putting myself out there as a freelance musical professional and advertising for more students, and I love it.

If you'd like to contact me, regarding any of the information on this site, then please contact me via the contact icons on every page, (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or call / text me directly on 0401 022 927.

Or you can email me on: simonchate@gmail.com.