Rodney Waterman : Associate Artist
Rodney Waterman is an Australian musician who specialises in the recorder. He studied music in Australia, Italy and the Netherlands. His repertoire is eclectic, with a particular interest in improvised and spontaneous music making, relating to both contemporary and historical musical forms. Rodney has collaborated in concert with many wonderful musicians, such as Joe Chindamo (Piano), Riley Lee and Anne Norman (Shakuhachi) and Ben Robertson (Double Bass). He has worked and performed with many brilliant recorder players, including Ruth Wilkinson, Ryan Williams, Robyn Mellor and Natasha Anderson. Rodney and Natasha worked 2 days a week (5 hours a day) in 1997-98 as instrument testers for the great Australian recorder maker Frederick Morgan in Daylesford Victoria. Rodney's CD Água e Vinho with Melbourne guitarist Doug de Vries, was released on the German ECM label in 2000 - Rod and Doug celebrated the 25th anniversary of the recording with a concert at the Boîte World Music Cafe (Fitzroy North, Melbourne) on May 23, 2025. Rodney was a regular performer at the Eltham Jazz Festival (2007-10). In 2014 his collaboration with sculptor Paul Blizzard, Dancing the Chisel, was hailed as a highlight of the Ballarat contemporary Festival of Slow Music. In July 2016 Rodney performed in concert with Italian jazz recorder player, Gianluca Barbaro, in Milan, Italy. 2021 saw the release of his solo 'Covid-lockdown' album twelve fantasias - 12 improvised fantasias for imagined acoustic spaces. And in November 2022, he released the first ever recording, on recorder, of all 8 solo Ricercate (1585) by the Venetian composer, Giovanni Bassano. Rodney performed the complete Ricercate in the Bluestone Chapel, Montsalvat, Eltham on November 5th, 2022. His Duo Windborne group, with Ryan Williams, released an original, improvisation-based album Venus Bay Fireside Sessions in Jan 2024. As an active and passionate music educator, Rodney makes practical and inclusive music making a major part of his classroom practice. He has worked over many years as an ensemble tutor at community music festivals, particularly inspired by the methods and publications of Jon Madin. Until recently, Rodney taught classroom music and Italian in a few small semi-rural primary schools on the north-eastern fringe of Melbourne.
Biography provided by the composer — current to February 2026