Ronan Apcar
Pianist, Ensemble Offspring; Composer and Independent Artist
ANAM Alum (Piano, 2023-24)
For me, ANAM was a place of transformation; I went in seeing myself as a pianist and left seeing myself as an artist. It was a place of experimentation; a safe space to explore what music could be and to be challenged by new perspectives. And it was a place of seriously hard work; I don't think I'd practised so much in my life before ANAM! This combination of transforming, experimenting, and working hard gave me the confidence to interrogate new musical ideas no matter how abstract and the capacity to overcome any technical challenges no matter how fiendish. I guess you could describe that as musical freedom. I reckon it's allowed me to be brave in my creative practice and achieve artistic goals that I would've previously thought were beyond me. For that, I'm indebted to ANAM - not just the faculty, but also the staff, the fellow musicians, and even the audiences.
Ronan Apcar (centre) represented ANAM at the annual Arts8 Collaboration, held at AFTRS June 2024. Photo credit: Hanna Lassen.
Truly, every day was different at ANAM and that was the magic of it. There was obviously a lot of practice squeezed in between an ever-changing schedule of concerts, classes, lessons, rehearsals, and sessions on anything from curation to pharma or Feldenkrais to architecture. But what I loved most were the moments in between. The chats in the gardens of the Abbotsford Convent, over the toastie machine during the lunch rush, in the practice rooms late at night (there was something better about the hang when you were procrastinating some desperately-needed practice), and over the spontaneous tea breaks (which I once infamously dragged out for five hours). The backstage antics, the post-concert highs and lows, or even the very inspired chocolate biscuits runs.
In a way, these are just some of the results of an experiment: what happens when you put a few dozen extraordinary musicians in a room together for a year? Besides some incredible music-making, I think you get a remarkably unique camaraderie - and how lucky it is to have both!
Ronan Apcar headshot by Jared Underwood