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A chat with Glenn Amer
 We're talking today to Glenn Amer who is a Sydney based pianist and singer. He can be seen performing on his own and in combination with Sirens of Song and Femme Fatale as well as a whole host of other shows. We've caught up with him in his dressing room before one of the Sirens performances for a chat.
Thanks for talking to us, Glenn. Let's start right at the top, can you please tell us about your earliest musical experiences?
Thank you. Well, I was born in 1974 and started playing piano at the age of three. We had an old piano at home and before I had any piano lessons I had started picking out tunes on it. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the notes of my own tunes so I had a wonderful plan to mark the ivory keys with a green crayon for later performances. There were two problems with this, the first was that my parents were rather less than impressed with the crayon marks, and the second problem was that the green marks told me which keys to play, but I couldn't remember the order in which to play them!
Did you learn the Suzuki method?
No, I studied piano in the most rigid old fashioned manner which I hated at the time but now I am grateful to my teachers for being so persistent. But I still wince when I think of having my fingers hit when I made a mistake!
But you sing as well now, how did you become interested in singing?
I never thought it was unusual to play the piano and sing, and my family had a large collection of old 78s of all the greats, including Caruso. So like Mario Lanza, (who also grew up with Caruso records) I was smitten with the sound of these great voices and I knew no other upbringing. My neighbours must have been annoyed by those impromptu "Sing-a-long with Caruso" sessions... but I guess that was my formative vocal training until I started studying in earnest.
Talking of singers, who are your favourites?
Caruso will always be number one, and I also love the voices of Jan Peerce, Helen Traubel, Mario Lanza, Anna Moffo, Mario del Monaco, Frank Sinatra, Vaughn Monroe, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, etc etc. When I was a kid I tried to write to Jan Peerce, but my letter was returned with the news that he had only recently passed away. Robert Goulet is my favourite popular singer and he has been incredibly supportive of my career and I will always be his biggest fan.
Who are some of the singers you have worked with?
For years I was Rita Hunter's accompanist, and I have worked with some very interesting singers, and great people, including Horst Hoffmann (tenor), Yvonne Kenny (soprano), David Hobson (tenor), Su Cruickshank (jazz diva). I have lost track of every singer and instrumentalist I've worked with, but the list would run into thousands and thousands of names.
Do you have any funny stories?
Well there was the time I was playing on an extendable stage - someone backstage pressed the "retract" button, and I had to jump off before the stage retracted into the main stage throwing the grand piano six feet down onto the floor, and then there was the time I turned up for a show and there was no piano - so a keyboard was hastily pressed into service. A kindly soul offered to turn pages for me and halfway through the song, he accidentally pressed the 'demo' button which started the keyboard blaring. Needless to say I always perform from memory now!
When I was in Japan, they had a little problem with my name, so "Glenn Amer" became "grenamer" which tickled my fancy...there are many other funny stories that I can't tell because of litigation concerns! But one day they'll be in my book!
I just remembered that I was shopping one day and a lady who'd seen me at one of my Sydney Town Hall concerts stopped me and asked me why I was doing my own shopping! At a winery concert I was once mistaken for the TV chef Iain Hewitson and was asked for his autograph, so I signed it!
Any non musical interests?
How long have we got? I love broadcasting on radio, I fiddle around with old valve equipment, and spend far too long polishing my cars, love art work and art galleries, enjoy hosting dinner parties, and am known to enjoy the occasional cigar. Did I mention the movies? I love Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Vincent Price, Grace Kelly, Grace Kelly, Grace Kelly. Did I remember to mention Grace Kelly? I just watched "Robin and the Seven Hoods" with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jnr, Dean Martin, Peter Falk and Bing Crosby. It was fantastic! I don't just live in the past and recently enjoyed "Good Night and Good Luck" (hang on, that was set in the 50s....) and last week saw "Syriana" - very powerful. "Memoirs of a Geisha" was visually stunning and I thought it was a very beautiful film. A friend of mine jokingly called it "Memoirs of a Chinese Geisha" (!) as they had Chinese actresses playing two of the main parts! What was the director thinking? Still it was a beautiful film. I love the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Pedro Aldomovar, Woody Allen, and I love the James Bond series. Not to forget "The Godfather" and "The Untouchables"...the list goes on and on and on. And I'm absolutely addicted to radio quiz shows. I don't go on them any more since being crowned 2GB's Quiz Champion at the age of 12. I retired undefeated and am not game to take a chance of losing my title! But I still love tuning in to the ABC's quizzes as well as the quiz at 11.30am on Saturdays and Sundays on 2UE. I'd love to be a quizmaster in style of the great Jack Davey. He had a rapier sharp wit and I love listening to his quick and hilarious responses to the contestants on those old broadcasts.
You said you enjoyed hosting dinner parties. If you could invite any person to a dinner party who would you invite?
That's a very tough question. I would love to invite the conductor Arturo Toscanini, but I would probably be too scared to actually ask him any questions! Toscanini had a formidable temper but he was such a great conductor. I'd love to be able to personally thank Thomas Alva Edison for his amazing inventions. Where would we be without our recordings and electric light, as well as everything else he invented? Norman Lindsay would be on the list, Dame Joan Sutherland, Sumi Jo, and perhaps we could ask Sir Noël Coward to entertain? Of course it would be difficult to invite a lot of these guests as some of them have been dead for a while, but it is an imaginary dinner party, isn't it?
What aspects of performing do you like the best?
I love entertaining people with the music they love to hear. I love the swing music of the forties and the early rock and roll, such as Johnny Ray. When I sing those songs you can see people smiling as they remember happy times in their lives. I had a letter the other day from a lady who was in tears as she described hearing the song "Wonderful, Wonderful" and the flood of memories it brought back. It was a very humbling experience for me. I remember that the next time I sang that song, I thought of the lady that had taken the trouble to write to me and gave it an extra special treatment.
Read any interesting books lately?
Yes I'm enjoying Paul B. Kidd's "The Australian Crime File", as well as "Frank Lloyd Wright" by Bruce Pfeiffer. I recently enjoyed "Oh Play that Thing" by Roddy Dowle, and was hooked on "Against Nature" by Joris-Karl Huysmanns. I read lots of biographies too and loved the recent biographies of Cary Grant and Diana Rigg. On a flight back from China recently I read "Don Quixote". I'm careful these days to not mix up the different books I'm reading at the same time because I got confused when I was reading a history of piano building and "Shogun" by James Clavell. I remember waking in the middle of the night and saying to myself, "but pianos weren't invented in sixteenth century Japan!"
Thank you for talking to us today. We'll look forward to seeing you at one of the forthcoming Sirens of Songs performances!
Thank you for inviting me. And if any of our readers happens to see me after one of the shows, don't be shy to come right up and say "Hello Glenn, what would you like to drink!?"
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