Elite Member

Stephen Kiely

Bio

 

Coming from a musical family, with his grandmother a fine piano player, his parents both leading their own bands from an early age before combining to perform together throughout the New South Wales club circuit, Stephen has followed an almost inevitable destiny to make music the basis for his personal and professional life. After completing many years of classical piano studies, he became caught up in the excitement of the pop music explosion of the late 20^th Century.

 

Stephen’s creative nature led him to write songs from an early age. However he soon learnt an important lesson when dealing with the music industry: “Without a vehicle you ain’t goin’ nowhere”, in other words, industry attention was, and is, always focussed on songwriters who have developed a platform for their material to be marketed. And so he formed the touring band, Radioactive, which, on the strength of his songs, was signed to record company EMI. The band toured Australia constantly, gaining rave reviews as a live act, as well as chart success both in Australia and in Europe and appeared on television shows Countdown, Hey Hey It’s Saturday and many others.

 

Taking a break from the constant touring schedule, Stephen began working solo around the nightclubs of Sydney, while he turned his hand to film music, co-writing the soundtrack to the critically acclaimed “Stallion Of The Sea” as well as having songs placed within other films, such as the cult noir film, “Early Frost”. Stephen also gained an education into the shorter song form as he worked for some years writing and performing in an advertising jingle band. You’ve probably been motivated to buy some fruit and vegetables as a result of one of his jingles.

 

During the 1990’s Stephen was bitten by the Internet bug, finding website design not that far removed from songwriting from a creative point of view, with the added advantage of the artist not having to jump through record company hoops to have their work published. Forming a website design company, Stephen successfully took on clients both from the music industry and from the corporate sector, an activity he continues to be involved in currently.

 

However, composing and performing are his main areas of interest, and after attending the third meeting of the newly formed songwriters organisation, Songsalive!, he joined as a regular member. This proved to be a life-changing decision as it was through his association with Songsalive! that Stephen met his wife, Roxanne, who had co-founded the organisation with fellow songwriter, Gilli Moon Aliotti. Initially content to attend workshops and showcases, his interest in Songsalive! grew to the point that he took on duties as Workshop Co-ordinator, Showcase MC and even turned his hand to CD cover design, being responsible now for the design of all but one of the organisation’s six CD’s. Find out more on the website, www.songsalive.org .

While initially, and for a couple of years, a purely professional friendship, the relationship between Roxanne and Stephen flowered in a number of ways, as they discovered many common areas of interest. As they had both been performing solo within the Sydney music scene for some years, it seemed inevitable that they would team up, which they did under the guise of CoverME, which plays regularly around Sydney and New South Wales. While CoverME is primarily an entertainment vehicle using cover standards, hence the name, Roxanne and Stephen’s own songs have proven to be popular requests at their gigs. You can find out more about CoverME at their website, one of many which Stephen has designed.

Both Roxanne and Stephen had success with their sites on the now defunct www.mp3.com, with Stephen’s song “Insist On Love” gaining a quarter of a million downloads. Roxanne regularly has songs in the top ten downloads of the local site www.mp3.com.au.

 

Another area of interest to Stephen is teaching. He became a guitar teacher out of necessity while at University, needing the funds to help support a Government scholarship.

However, he soon found he liked the concept of teaching, with its inherent give-and-take and flow of ideas. As he says, there is nothing like watching the development of a talent, helping it grow while exposing it to as many facets of creative interest possible on the journey to musical success, a journey which never ends.

 

Together with Roxanne, Stephen has rekindled his love of teaching, concentrating now more on popular piano styles, combined with basic guitar method. His main area of expertise is one not covered by many courses and yet such an important ability to develop: Co-ordinated piano playing and singing in performance. It may seem like a simple concept, but as any piano player will tell you, it helps to be a little schizophrenic to be a good pianist, necessitating the ability to operate hands and feet in independent co-ordination. Combine this with remembering all those words and projecting the total performance, and you have quite a bit to master before a song will be successfully delivered. Stephen has an intuitive ability to do this and enjoys teaching the rudiments of it to his students.

 

Together with his wife Roxanne, Stephen is enjoying partaking in the many faceted and inspiring world that is the international music industry.

 

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