"I come from a Celtic background—Irish, English and Welsh—so I was surely bound to be a music lover! I was influenced by my father, a well-educated pianist and singer as well as a writer and lover of poetry. He’d come home in the evening and play the piano and sing, and from the time I was very small, he would read poetry to me in the evenings as well as sing me lullabies. That was a beautiful thing for my ear. My mother died just prior to my eighth birthday, so that affected my life. I attended Loreto Normanhurst in Sydney from Grade 6 to Form 5, which was a formative period of my life, especially when it comes to music, education and my call to religious life."