Jeanene loves life in music

Struggling to gain a musical education, piano teacher has sung around the world

Jeanene at home in her beloved music room. Picture: FILE

THE hills of Austria - and everywhere else - were certainly alive with the sound of music whenever Jeanene Chapman was visiting.

The Stanthorpe piano teacher has trained a generation or two of young players but she also loves singing. Travelling the world with her partner, Gino Zanatta, the pair would often burst into song.

"We would see something that reminded us of a song,” she said.

"We'd start up and other people would join in.”

Life in Music

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They sang in the fields of Canada where Jeanene had gone to see the location of a loved book, Anne of Green Gables and in churches in England and at Gino's funeral, his two grandsons who had accompanied them on a trip to Fiji included the comment "those two were always singing” in the eulogy.

Music was a hard-won skill for young Jeanene. She was able to ride her bike to piano lessons when the family lived in Coolangatta but they later moved to Thulimbah while setting up an orchard. Young Jeanene had to board in Stanthorpe at the CWA Hostel aand could only go home on weekends.

Even then she knew she wanted to be a music teacher and so she obtained a place at St Catherine's school in Warwick where she did duties around the school in exchange for board. One of those was playing for the kindergarten while the teachers had lunch. At the age of 17 she got the job after the real teacher got sick.

A later job for a tax accountant allowed her to earn money to pay for lessons and exams and as she rode the train from Thulimbah to Warwick, she would study music theory.

"From 11 to 19 years old, I had no time to do anything else,” she said.

"All the other kids were going to dances but I didn't have the dime or the time.”

Married in 1959 and with three children, Rosy, Colin and Jeanette, life on the orchard with its "hard, hard work” also left little time for music.

But it was her mother who got her back on track. Telling Jeanene that she was "doing nothing with her music”, she arranged for her to listen to a student.

"She knew I'd get hooked,” she said.

Jeanene then started to take a few students in Thulimbah and also set up a Drama and Music group at the CWA.

But there was room for something else, and Jeanene then studied for a singing diploma. "It was tricky, I had the orchard, three children, a husband but there was no singing teacher here,” she said.

She learnt by using a tape recorder and travelling to have a lesson in Toowoomba when she "hit a blank”.

"I knew enough about music to know what I wanted to sound like,” she said. "I just had to tweak the details.”

Teaching for a living turned out to be necessary when she seperted from her husband after 20 years.

It was while producing Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers for the Little Theatre that she started working with Gino Zanatta who was sharing the lead roles with his brother.

"I was feeling very lonely and Gino asked me if I'd like to go for a drive,” she said.

"It was a lovely day”.

A "wonderful” relationship lasting 33 years ensured.

And even in the grief of his passing, Jeanene turned back to her music and continues to give lessons.

”It gives me a real purpose in life.” she said.