Gerry Ramage

Name: Gerry Ramage
Main instrument: Trombone
Teaching focus: To help students develop and express their inner musical feelings through a comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals of music and brass playing technique.
Musical influences: Orchestral - Recordings and attendance of live performances of many of the world's top Symphony Orchestras. Jazz - J.J. Johnson, Charlie Parker, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, Bill Watrous, Eliington, Basie, and many others from the 40's 50's and 60's. Other - Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, John Mayall, Robert Johnson.
Career highlights: Tricky! Performing with many leading artists in all genres . Meeting and performing with Cleo Lane, Barbara Cook, Harry Secombe, Gene Pitney, Luciano Pavarotti, John Williams, James Galway, to name a few, all bring back special memories.
The instrument you wish you could play: Drums and piano
Scariest stage moment: On a gig in Sydney, a big band was playing in a large auditorium where a pigeon had gotten in and was roosting in the flies above the stage. When trombonist Gerry Ramage stood to play a solo, the pigeon scored a bulls-eye with a large deposit right on his head. George Brodbeck, the other trombonist, remarked, "Everyone's a critic!"
What’s your favourite thing outside music? Electronics, sound engineering, electric blues guitar.

Gerry comes to Orange offering wide ranging experience in brass teaching and performance, both nationally and internationally.

Having had a broad primary and secondary musical education in choirs and brass bands in Sydney, he diversified into Orchestral, Jazz and Commercial music pursuits in the early 1970’s on both trombone and electric guitar.

A scholarship on Trombone with the ABC National Training Orchestra and Jazz Studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, along with private studies with one of Australia’s most outstanding trombone teachers, the late Baden McCarron, gave Gerry the foundations for building a successful musical career in many fields of music, including Symphony, Opera and Ballet Orchestras, Jazz Bands, Ethnic, Rock Bands, TV and Radio, Nightclubs and Recording Studios.

After playing in most of the professional Sydney seasons of popular musicals over 20 years, and teaching at many prominent schools on Sydney’s North Shore, he accepted a temporary position as a Brass Teacher on Guernsey in the Channel Islands in 2001, which lasted for 5 years instead of the intended 12 months!

Among others, Gerry has played for: Dame Shirley Bassey, Gene Pitney, Dame Joan Sutherland, Julio Iglesia, Luciano Pavarotti, John Dankworth and Cleo Lane, Jerry Lewis, Geoff Harvey Midday show band, ‘Macca’ and Sir Harry Secombe. Professional Musical productions in Sydney include: Cats, Les Miserables, La Cage Aux Folles, Camelot (with Sir Richard Harris), Guys and Dolls, Porgy and Bess, Nine, Barnum, Sugar Babies, Hello Dolly and Sweet Charity.

Orchestral playing includes: Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmanian, West Australian, Singapore and Guernsey Symphony Orchestras, Australian Opera and Ballet, Victorian State Opera, Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, London Festival Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Sydney Philharmonia and Australian Chamber Orchestras.

Gerry’s main goals in coming to Orange are to communicate some of the vast playing experience he has had in professional ensembles to the pupils of Orange, in the hope that some of them may continue on to higher levels of performance and achievement, but that most of them will develop the ability to express their inner musical feelings in a practical and meaningful way and gain a living appreciation of the world of musical expression.