Pittwater Online News

March 1 - 31, 2025: Issue 640

Loosely Woven Celebrates 30th Anniversary with  'Unwound' Concerts - A Few Insights from and Into Founder Wayne Richmond

Pittwater Online recently had the pleasure and privilege of chatting with Wayne Richmond, founder of the music group 'Loosely Woven', which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary with a series of free concerts called 'Loosely Woven Unwound'. Two will run next weekend at Avalon and Narrabeen. 

Loosely Woven has put a new repertoire together for free public concerts three to four times a year during the last three decades. The Programme ranges from pop to opera to folk, and includes a variety of singers and performers playing instruments such as the harmonium, violin, saxophone, harp and glockenspiel. 

Wayne says new instrumentalists and singers are always welcome to join the group - you don't have to be an expert, just join in the fun.

Loosely Woven usually has 15 to 25 musicians playing at any one time. Wayne’s wife, Gial, sings duets with Wayne and plays the glockenspiel and violin. Wayne plays the keyboard, concertina and piano accordion.

"The nature of any particular concert is a direct reflection of the people who happen to be involved at the time. As a rule, every concert consists of all new music.” Wayne says

“Invitations to participate are circulated followed by a planning meeting during which everyone has an opportunity to contribute to the program. A number of us then set about arranging the items and preparing the music for the first rehearsal a few weeks later. As a result of this process, the concerts always include a wide variety of material – anything goes in a Loosely Woven concert!  The 'all new music' each time also means that newcomers and 'old timers' alike are both learning two hours of new music from scratch! ”

"One important characteristic of Loosely Woven concerts is that they are performed strictly acoustically. Apart from the keyboard amp (an unfortunate necessity) no other amplification is used. Not only does this mean that the audience has a rare opportunity to hear the actual sound of vocal chords and violin strings vibrating (instead of the usual speaker membrane!) it also finds itself on an equal footing with the performers when it comes to joining in. There are always lots of opportunities for audience participation in a Loosely Woven concert and when they do it sounds fantastic for all of us! ”

Under Wayne’s expert direction many people have discovered musical and performance talents they didn’t know they had. 

Since 2007 Loosely Woven rehearsals are always in Humph Hall - formerly the Allambie Heights Uniting Church but now part of Wayne's home, which he and wife Gial purchased that year. 

Here they established 'Humph Hall' a name which stems from Wayne's love for Pooh bear, stories he often read to his children.

Built as a Methodist Church in 1960, it consisted of the church plus two outside toilets. The adjacent hall (10 square metres with a kitchen in the corner) was added 10 years later. In 1977 it became part of the new Uniting Church and then specifically, a few years ago, a Tongan parish. It was put on the market in 2006 so that the Tongan congregation could contribute towards the building of a large Sydney-wide Tongan church elsewhere.

After a gruelling, 6 month process, Gial and Wayne finally purchased it and moved in on 23rd August, 2007. 

“It was a lot of money, but it was just perfect,” says Wayne, who then found a photo of himself at the old church voting in the 1972 federal election when Gough Whitlam was elected prime minister.

An even better photo was taken on Sunday 20th March 2011 when Wayne Richmond and Gial Leslie married in their Humph Hall. Wayne and Gial had been partners for over ten years and their close and supportive partnership brought to fruition Wayne’s long held dream to create a custom designed space for music-making in his own home.

“Hundreds of artists from all over the world have performed in our ‘living room’ – that is, the former church which we now call Humph Hall,” says Wayne.

Wayne is being characteristically modest through this statement - some of Australia's and the world's best musicians and poets have premiered new works at the venue, and continue to.

Where and when were you born?

I was born in Mildura, Victoria on February 10th 1951, I’m 74 now. 

BIRTH

RICHMOND—Feb. 10. At Hospital. to Thora and Gordon, a son (Wayne Gordon). Both well. Family Notices (1951, February 12). Sunraysia Daily (Mildura, Vic. : 1920 - 1956), p. 5. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article282314803

Where did you grow up?

I moved up here when I was 5 – we had a shop at Balgowlah on the corner of Sydney road and Hill street. It was a mixed business, this was back in the days before Woollies and big supermarkets. They had the biscuits in bulk and fresh fruit and vegetables. Then the Totem shopping centre got built and put us out of business. Then Warringah Mall got built and put them out of business. 

I used to go down to Manly pool with my sister by the time I was 7, she was 11, then catch the bus back home. 

How did your passion for music begin?

It almost didn't. I was among 50 boys playing descant recorder at Manly West Public School, a frightful unmusical din. We then had a piano brought into our home, but I wasn't too serious about it, didn't do any practice throughout 5 years of lessons.

Then I went to Bathurst to boarding school for 4 years from the age of 10, from halfway through 5th grade in primary to halfway through 3rd form in high school.  That’s where I learnt to play piano. I remember there was a music teacher there who used to play piano at the assembly every morning. One morning he played Rondo Alla Turka and I thought ‘I want to play that!’ and that’s why I learnt to play the piano. In the last 3 months of being at that boarding school I joined the park band and for 3 months learnt how to play the bagpipes.

When I came back down to Sydney I joined the Warringah Pipe Band and played the bagpipes with them until I got kicked out because my hair was too long. My hair was about as long as a Beatle length then. The Pipe Major of that time didn’t like the hair popping out from beneath the glengarry, even the women had to have their hair really tight.

Because I played the bagpipes, I wasn’t very good at it of course only having learnt how to do so for 3 months, but was one of the ones who would always turn up to support the surf carnivals when others didn’t, I put down on my enrolment form that I played these when I went to university.

Winsome Evans, one of the lecturers who was at Sydney University, saw that and invited me to join the Renaissance Players to play the bagpipes. I then spent 10 years playing with the Renaissance Players and THAT is where any musical ability I have now derives from.  It wasn’t years of music lessons, it was the 10 years with the Renaissance Players. Even though I was nothing like the other players, they were of a really high standard; the countertenor got a scholarship and went on to England, he was a really big name – there was Michael Atherton who went on to become a Professor of Music at Western Sydney University, Lyndon Terracini went on and had a huge career as a baritone and doing really difficult modern stuff, all his life, and has just recently retired as the Artistic Director of Opera Australia, I got to be around them, soak it in.

So these are really good people, and I was just there playing the bagpipes and doing the odd bit of percussion with the cymbals or a bit of drums, because I was there. Then the guy who played the handbells left and I did the handbells as well – so I was nothing like the rest but nevertheless that 10 years of reading the music and counting the beats and learning from Winsome – she is an amazing musician – is how it all began.

How did Loosely Woven commence?

Because I was in the Renaissance Players when I started teaching at Narrabeen North Primary School the Renaissance Players agreed to do a concert there. The local community radio station didn’t exist, there were a group of people that were looking at doing it, they had a test broadcast coming up, and one of them heard about the new teacher at Narrabeen who was a Renaissance Player and got in touch asking if she could interview me about that. She told me there was a meeting of the Radio Station and those interested in the next week and as I was interested in technology I went along to that and walked away on the Board of Directors of the ‘Radio Manly-Warringah’. They were just grabbing anybody of course! (smiles)

I did get heavily involved in that; it was a 9-year struggle to get a licence because there wasn’t even such a thing as a community radio station in a metropolitan area then. We eventually did and one of the programs I used to organise was a live-to-air concert once a month. On the first Saturday of each month, at 4.30 we had a concert going live to air. These concerts were called ‘Live from Narrabeen’

I would find people and they would perform and every now and then they weren’t able to do it so I would grab a couple of friends and we would do it. One time we decided to do the whole concert – there was somebody reading a bit of poetry – but the whole hour and a half was basically us. 

There’d been a woman, Nicky Lock, who’d previously come along with the Anglican Church Choir from Narrabeen and was brilliant. I said to her ‘why don’t we do a whole concert with you, I have a friend who plays violin and I can play keyboard and guitar and we’ll back you. So we did that. 

I knew about Rhona Mawer, a well-known folkie around the place, and somebody told me about Judy Eddington who did a radio program, who can actually sing – so I invited these to come along. So, we had these three women; Nicki who was an operatic singer, Rhonda who could sing folk and Judy who could do pop and jazz. We had me on keyboard, another really great player on guitar and a friend of mine on flute. We did this whole 'Live from Narrabeen' concert in February 30 years ago. We were really pleased with it, it went really well.

At the end of it Judy said ‘why don’t we do a public concert?’. I said ‘ok’ and then somebody said, ‘well, if you’re going to do a public concert you’re going to need a name’. The month prior to our concert was done by a Christian rock band called ‘Tightly Packed’ so a friend of mine said ‘why don’t you call yourselves ‘Loosely Woven’?’

It’s an incredibly appropriate name now because these days it’s a very loose knit group, it’s not a fixed group; whoever happens to be in the concert. It’ a very appropriate name for us now even though then we were simply aiming to be the opposite of this group called ‘Tightly Packed’.

I had a look and Warriewood surf club was available quite cheaply during the week so we booked that on a Wednesday night and had our first public concert in the September of 1975. We called it ‘Loosely Woven By the Sea’ because it was at Warriewood surf club.

Some months later we did another one there. 

The concerts for seniors in retirement villages and helping Amnesty Avalon – how did they begin?

Pittwater Council contacted me and told me they were organising a music festival and asked me if I’d put on a concert for the Seniors. I was living right near the beach at North Narrabeen then, in Ocean street, just past the W G Taylor retirement village. So I popped in there and asked the Rec woman in charge if we could do it there and she said ‘yes, we’d love that’.

I went back to Pittwater Council who said ‘that’s across the bridge, that’s Warringah’. So we put on a concert near Warriewood Square instead. 

I went back to the village and explained and the woman was so disappointed I said we could put on a concert with the group we had going, ‘Loosely Woven’. So we did a concert for them and then we did another one, and another one. 

School for Seniors had done a 'Live from Narrabeen' concert and I said to them we were going to do a Christmas concert at W G Taylors and do you want to come along and sing with us as Carols are much better with lots of singers. Barbara, the woman in charge of School for Seniors said, ‘look I won’t bring the School for Seniors singers I’ll bring the St David’s Dee Why Choir’. We called it the St David’s Choir with Loosely Woven. 

Barbara then asked if we could do a performance at St. David’s as well. So the next time we did one we did W G Taylor in the afternoon and St. David’s at night.

A bit after that Kath Moody from Amnesty Avalon came to one of the St. David’s concerts and asked afterwards if we’d do one for Amnesty International. 

That’s kind of how it built up – we always do a concert for St. David’s and we always do one for Amnesty at Avalon. Over the years we must have helped raise well over 40 thousand dollars for them. The others we’ve done concerts for have also had fundraisers at these, so we’re not sure how much we’ve helped them help others over the years, but they keep asking us to come back, share the songs and the music.

One of the great things about doing this is that when we put on the concerts we can ask the audience if they’d like to get involved and come along and play an instrument. We’d love to hear from them and get them involved – for all of you who put your trumpet or flute away in the cupboard while you were bringing your kids up, it’s time to get it back out again and come along and play – and play with us. It’s great fun and we have a wonderful time. We do everything from folk to pop to opera. 

Humph Hall and yourself and your friends have also been where Australian works have been premiered. Last year you produced Ted Egan’s Balls & Chains(a musical set in the convict era in Australia and the British Isles written by the acclaimed Ted Egan); how did that happen?

Mostly we just do concerts but about 5 years ago two of us came up with the idea of doing Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury – the first opera they ever did together. It only goes for 40 minutes, it’s all set in a courthouse and all singing – there’s no dialogue. We wouldn’t dream of taking on a Mikado or any of those BIG full on ones – but Trial by Jury; I’d done it when I was a kid up at boarding school, in fact I was the bride because it was all done by boys. So I knew we could do this.

Christine Logan, this wonderful woman who runs a company called Endangered Productions together with Peter Alexander, who works in Opera Australia, put on productions that are endangered – those that other people won’t do. An amazing one they did a couple of years ago was Peer Gynt, where they did the music to go with the play, just an amazing woman. They also did the Beggars Opera, which Christine Directed, and they did a brilliant job. 

Christine agreed to Direct us and that’s what it possible because most of us hadn’t done anything like this before – it went well and is up on YouTube for those who want to have a look. Trail by Jury we did in four different courthouses around NSW, I played the judge. 

Quite a few years ago Ted Egan did a concert at Humph Hall and talked about a musical he’d written called ‘Balls and Chains’ and that no one had ever staged it. We talked then about us perhaps doing it and we put in a lot of work putting the songs into scores for the players and then he went back to Alice Springs and spoke about some people there who were going to do it and it all lapsed.

During Covid, when we all weren’t meeting face-to-face, we used to have Zoom meetings just to check up on each other, sing songs to each other, keep each other up. On one of those I was just looking at my calendar and it said it was Ted Egan’s birthday the day of our next meeting. So I invited Ted to join in so we could wish him Happy Birthday from the Loosely Woven gang and we all got talking and Balls and Chains came up and I asked him if it had been done. He said ‘well, no’ – he’d paid some professional musicians to do a studio recording of it, but no one had ever staged it. I talked to Christine and Maria and we rang Ted back and asked if we could modify it a bit, he said 'yes, do it', and we did a huge amount of work and staged it. 

We put together all these English and Irish songs dating from before colonisation to set the scene in England and what it was like before they started sending all these convicts over. We then did Ted Egan’s Balls and Chains, which is also up on YouTube. 

We were back to doing an ordinary concert by the end of last year, which is also a lot of work, but nowhere near as much work as we had to do to Ted’s work.

What are your favourite places in Pittwater and why? – although we will allow you to extend that 'over the bridge'  and south to Allambie just this once Wayne…. or Manly, where you would play as a youngster 

I used to live 50 metres from North Narrabeen beach, but it would have to be Humph Hall in that case – because we do such wonderful things there. And Manly Dam, I walk around there of a morning and it’s just beautiful – I vaguely remember skinny dipping in there when I was a little boy.

What is your ‘motto for life’ or a favourite phrase you try to live by?

One thing that I think everyone could benefit from is ‘do the maths’. 

What I mean by that is, if you do something, imagine if everyone did it. So, when you drop your rubbish on the side of the road there – imagine if everyone did that. When you start talking in the middle of rehearsal, imagine if everyone did that. When you decide not to turn up to practice, to train as part of the crew doing something together; imagine if everyone did that.

This goes for the good things too, the opposite; I never drop any rubbish, I always make sure everything goes in the bin.

So, whatever it is, do the maths – decide how you want it all to add up, choose.

Loosely Woven's Unwound dates

The community-based musical ensemble will hold ‘all-afternoon extravaganzas’ titled Loosely Woven Unwound. over the next few weeks with one at Avalon Baptist Church next Saturday, March 29, followed by another at The Lakes Catholic  Parish Hall in Lagoon Street, Narrabeen on Sunday March 30 - a venue Wayne says has the best acoustics and well worth attending just to hear how great Loosely Woven can sound.

Find out more and join in at: Loosely Woven Website: looselywoven.org

Humph Hall website: humphhall.org