Q&A: Vaughan Fleischfresser

VF: I grew up on a farm in rural Australia, and at my local primary school one of the support staff ran a fife band, which was my introduction to music-making. We didn't have a music teacher at the school, but my parents were keen for my brother and I to learn an instrument, so we both started playing the saxophone. I had private lessons throughout primary school, and when I got to high school there were group lessons available, so I went along to those as well as having private lessons. I joined all the school bands I could, and it was in one of those first band rehearsals I looked at the conductor and thought: ‘yes, I think that's what I want to do’. So I kept making music through my school years, picking up oboe and bassoon along the way, and then when it came to choosing what to do at university there was really nothing else I wanted to do other than music teaching, so I ended up studying a Bachelor's in saxophone performance, secondary music and instrumental teaching at the Queensland University of Technology.