"My violin and piano teacher, Mother Lua Byrne ibvm, was a great influence. She was a very fresh-faced, smiling woman, intelligent and kind, and drew the best out of her students. She always had that sense of loving what she was doing, and she loved us. So it made a big difference to a small child to have such a beautiful woman as my music teacher.She brought my gifts out of me in a great way so that by the time I finished school, I was leading the school orchestra, I was music captain, and I was carrying the two instruments of piano and violin at the top levels. She’d prepared me well for performance studies at Sydney Conservatorium in 1953. It looked as if that would set me out on a career in music and I was happy for that. She introduced me to ethnomusicology in Form 5, and it became a life-long interest for me, with implications for pursuing the connections between music, spirituality, liturgy and culture."