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I first met Bianca in April 2002, along with her mother Anna, who accompanied Bianca to her lessons each week. I remember being surprised by how well spoken and enthusiastic this little 5 year old girl was, asking me questions and keen to answer questions I had for her. It was the start of another musical journey, watching another little one tackle the piano, and me as a teacher doing my best to keep her interested and motivated enough to do the work I set for her each week.

Bianca was an easy student to teach, she learnt skills easily, grasped the concepts and mastered techniques quickly. I soon realised though, that Bianca possessed an incredible willingness to improve in every aspect of her music. She started coming to her lessons eager to show me the latest song she had worked out by ear. She started jamming with her father, playing at church, performing at parties and doing everything she could to improve. All this whilst still attending primary school.

Bianca enrolled at Sacred Heart College in 2009 and in her time at the school performed with the Chamber ensemble and also the School Orchestra. She enrolled at Oxygen College as well and attained Certificate IV in Music Business which allowed her to collaborate and perform with other musicians like herself. She performed at music festivals and also composed and recorded a CD as part of that course.

In 2014 Bianca decided to do VCE Solo Music Performance. I discussed with her the level of commitment required for this subject, but Bianca had already decided, telling me “It’s what I do, It’s my thing”. There was no turning back. She completed Grade 7 ANZCA with honours, Theory exams with first class honours and enjoyed the challenge that VCE music gave her. She often would come to lessons last year having learnt extra pieces “for fun”.

Almost 13 years later, I was honoured to help present Bianca with the Oxygen Student Of The Year Award for 2014, and I am fortunate to still be giving her weekly lessons, as we work towards Grade 8. She loves playing jazz and popular standards, enjoys Boogie, Blues and Ragtime, and plays ballads with more emotion than just about anyone I know.

Recently I asked Bianca what she would like to achieve next with her music, and she told me that she would like to continue performing and also would like to pass on the enjoyment that music has given to her onto others.

Tony Musella

The 2015 Bill Ellis drum award is a very special award that acknowledges the overall achievement and enthusiasm of one drum kit student from Oxygen Tuition.

This award is carefully selected as it recognises a student’s overall focus, improvement and consistency in their music endeavours over the year.

Daniel Valitutti was last year’s deserving recipient of the Bill Ellis award after taking on a whole new level of drumming challenges. Working with his teacher Hilton Winiecki, Daniel embarked on a new direction with his drumming lessons by accepting the challenge to learn new styles and techniques such as Latin Drumming and some advanced Funk drumming. In order to embark on these styles Daniel worked extremely hard on improving his music reading, hand and feet independence and general knowledge on music styles. It has been an ongoing learning process for Daniel who is continuing in 2016 on improving on these styles.

Daniel started drumming lessons 6 years ago and has attributed his development in his playing to constantly learning and tackling new material and styles. He also enjoys discovering new styles of drumming that he did not know existed.

Like most students, Daniel has gone through periods where his playing progress had slowed down, but he recognised that help with any of his struggles is always on hand with his teacher and his positive attitude towards accepting new challenges has made a big difference.

Last year’s drum concerts ended with Daniel performing the drum solo chart ‘Streets of Cuba’ which highlighted all the great Latin drumming that he had been working on. Daniel said that this was one of the ‘most fun, yet challenging’ pieces he had learnt so far. Daniel is looking forward to continuing discovering new drumming styles in 2016 with his lessons and is currently studying ‘songwriting – from a drummers perspective’ with his teacher. Daniel is also looking forward to developing his band playing and is working towards starting gigs soon.

Well Done Daniel, very well deserved.
Hilton Winiecki

Bill managed a fulltime managerial career and a lively music lifestyle since the mid 1950’s.

At 15 he started his recording and live music career, playing all over Geelong and Melbourne. Good friend Peter DeVisa from the channel 9 band, introduced Bill to a larger crowd of musicians which gave him plenty of opportunities to do what he liked most, learning and playing jazz.

Any function was a good excuse to put together a band to keep the party goers entertained and he was always available to play at school concerts every year.

Most weekends he played gigs, whether it be at The Sailors Rest, The Shadow Fax Winery The Elephant and Castle and many more with such great local artists such as Owen Yateman, Gary Tigani and Paul Retke.

Billy took great enjoyment showing interested people how to play, including myself and big brother Jamie. In 2002, after retiring from the Nissan Motor Company, he started teaching percussion at the Geelong Grammar School. A friendship with the Moneas also had him passing on his years of experience at their school. He was thrilled to be able to give back to the drumming community and his students filled him with much pride. At that time Bill took lessons from Australian session drummer Daryn Farugia for his own growth and to help give his students a blend of both new and old techniques. He practiced everyday and was known to carry a pair of drum sticks and a practice pad in his car just in case he needed to play the new stick pattern he’d just learnt.

I was very lucky to have him as my father and proud that his drumming legacy continues through this award.

Julien Ellis