It’s not every day one gets to chat to somebody who has led a procession of carol singers down the main aisle of York Minster, sung with famed British a capella group the King’s Singers in Canberra, has a deep knowledge and understanding of mediaeval and Baroque music and, just by the way, has a PhD in Sociology.
That person is Heather Middleton, yet another of 2MBS’s extraordinary team of volunteer presenters, whose programmes include ‘In Early Times’ and ‘Diversions in Fine Music’. For nine years she was also responsible for the Christmas morning show, enjoying the opportunity to present ‘music that reminded me of Christmas in York’.
She credits her immersion in music to the small Sydney school she attended, where everybody had to be in the choir. Then came a pivotal moment – again through a choir, this one at her selective high school, which specialised in music. There she heard for the first time a version of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ and, she says, ‘my world transformed’. In addition to singing with the choir, she joined a group that sang madrigals.
At a music camp she studied mediaeval music with students of Winsome Evans, then Professor of Music at Sydney University and one of Australia’s premier early music specialists.
For a while after school she worked in the corporate sector, earning enough to fund a trip abroad, landing, for four years in York, working for an arts organisation.
York, the cathedral city she describes as ‘the embodiment of the mediaeval and Renaissance period’, helped to ‘ground and give a context’ to the music she loved. ‘The music belonged in those cathedrals and ‘I learnt the social context’ from which it had emerged.
Heather’s drive to understand social context led naturally to her studies in sociology, both the theory and the practice. ‘I found it gave me an understanding of social life, of disadvantaged groups and groups that needed care and of why society was the way it was.’
So how did all that translate into regular appearances in the St Leonards studios of 2MBS?
‘I’d been aware of 2MBS for a long time but there were other priorities’ and it was only when she was between university contracts in 2013/2014 that she decided to become involved. Initially her role was as intern coordinator, but when she heard the station was looking for female presenters, she decided to give it a try.
Her background in teaching and in recording lectures for distance learning students meant she had no fears about broadcasting and 2MBS ‘opened up opportunities and windows into different worlds’ and enabled her to develop her presentation skills.
A woman with many interests, Heather is also an expert in the use of labyrinths for walking meditation and has trained facilitators who lead groups on the monthly facilitated walks around the Centennial Park labyrinth.
When she finally leaves the city, she will be found at the Narara Intergenerational Eco Village on the Central Coast, where she is about to build a sustainable home. It is not, she insists, a retirement home, ‘but a village for people of all ages who want to live more sustainably!’
Somehow, I suspect that retirement is not a word she really understands.