Profile:Katie Yap

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Katie's first experience with an instrument was when she was about 5 - she started playing piano in Suzuki method. By the 3357th variation of twinkle twinkle she was ready to throw the piano against the wall. That was physically fairly impossible, so instead she just quit. When she came back to Australia (she lived in New York from 1994 - 1996), she started again when she was 7 with a different method and loved it. However, she again quit lessons when she started high school in 2003, and has since very much regretted it. She still plays and the piano is her main instrument for improvisations and the basis for composition.

Katie also plays violin and viola, but is a 'converted one' - she played violin since she was 9 then picked up viola as well when she was 14. Now she primarily plays viola and loves it to bits, and will defend it and violists against the blows of society. She is doing her AmusA exam at the end of the year, but the only way she got so far was from her brilliant teacher, Miss Fin.

She also sings soprano and has been in some choir or other since she was 7, but has had no formal training or lessons. She hopes to join a semi-professional choir after school. Katie + guitar = N00B. But she likes fiddling around.

In relation to composing, Katie has (as far as she can remember) always liked to make up little things, since she was around four years old, but the first time she composed anything with any real purpose was when she was 14, for a composing task in classroom music. She has progressed from a chamber-pop style to a more romantic/20th century style, and hopes that's a good thing. Most of her compositions are for voice, strings, piano, or any combination thereof. Her most recent actual composition was a choral (SSA, 2 pianos + cello accomp.) work which was completed October 2006, and did an arrangement of You Raise Me Up for SSA, piano, violin, 2 violas, double bass and french horn in January 2007.