Humans of Old Trinity #11 - Patrick Jaffe
/in conversation with Denis Curnow
Years at Trinity
Years 2 – 12, 2005-2016
Why Trinity?
I think my parents were largely impressed by the co-curricular side of things, just the range of opportunities on offer. I also remember when they were first looking at schools, my parents took a tour with Colin Coutts, who was the Head of the Junior School at the time. They came back from that absolutely raving. He was fantastic, he knew so much about all the boys and what was going on in the school.
Have you had any involvement with the school after leaving?
A little bit. This term, I’ve just started a bit of music teaching there again, and I did a similar thing a couple of years ago. Mainly double bass lessons with beginners in the junior school. It’s a mix of one-on-one lessons and also the new junior school ensembles program, where all the Yr 5s choose an instrument to learn and then play in small groups.
How’d you get involved with that?
I’ve kept in touch with the music staff after school, and when that new ensemble program was added they needed extra instrumental staff, so they got in touch.
What did you do after leaving school?
First off I took a gap year, which also came about through a Trinity connection. Nick Smith, who taught history at Trinity, was working in a junior school in the UK at the time. He offered me the chance to go and do the standard Aussie gap year job – working at the school, helping out with the boarding, coaching a bit of sport and being a teaching assistant as well. So I did that for a year, then came back and started Uni at Monash doing Economics, and I’m just about to finish that, I’m in my final semester now. On the side of that, I’ve been keeping up a lot of music as well. Not actually studying it, more just as a hobby and a bit of a semi-career at the moment.
A lot of the boys who knew you at school would remember you had a passion for music. How’s that going for you now?
It’s been an interesting one. There are a lot less opportunities made for you once you leave school, especially if you choose the pathway I took, to not actually study music. But I still absolutely love it, and it’s important to me to keep it as a big part of my life. I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be my actual career, or if it’s going to be something on the side, or later on it might become my career. But I get quite regular private lessons with various musicians who I love. That’s one of the nice things about not studying it at uni, I get a lot more freedom to choose who I want to learn with. I’ve also been lucky in that I’ve had quite a good network of peers who are studying music, so I’ve been able to play in bands with them which has been a lot of fun and given me a lot of opportunities as well.
Why did you choose not to pursue studying music?
It was partly because I was given a really good opportunity to study Economics through a scholarship, and also I think you can have multiple passions in life, and you don’t necessarily have to focus 100% on just one of them. I’m really fascinated by Economics as a discipline and I’ve really been enjoying studying it. I did look at double degrees, but in the end I’m quite happy with my decision, because it meant that I was able to study that a lot more in depth, and a lot of great chances came up that wouldn’t have otherwise – for example, I couldn’t have gone on exchange for a whole year if I did just Music or a double degree.
Tell us more about your exchange. Where did you go, and why, and how was it?
It was an amazing experience. I did one semester in Aarhus in Denmark at the end of last year. I stayed over in Europe after that, and at the start of this year I moved over the border and did another semester in Sweden, in Uppsala. Unfortunately that got cut a little bit short by the COVID-19 situation, but both of those experiences were just amazing – brilliant countries to live in, and for me doing economics, I just found it fascinating learning from those countries with their welfare states and their stance on sustainability. I thought it was quite inspiring to learn about those fields, in a great university system over there. It was also great for my particular co-curricular interests. There’s an incredible music scene in both those countries, particularly for the styles of improvised music that I love. And also, my other hobby is the sport of orienteering, which is quite minor in Australia, but in Scandinavia it’s one of the main sports. So it was quite cool to train and race for some of the bigger clubs over there.
How did you get involved with orienteering?
I was probably about 11 or 12 when I started doing it properly. It started because my dad was quite involved with the sport, but over the course of my time at the school, I started to really enjoy the training for it. While I was at school I was really lucky to be selected to run for the Australian junior team a couple of times, so I had some amazing experiences of going to those competitions in Norway and Switzerland, which were pretty special. Since finishing Yr 12, I’ve been able to devote a bit more time to training, trying to increase my mileage and the technical training I do for the orienteering side of things. That was also part of the reason I went to Scandinavia. There are really challenging forests for orienteering over there, and there’s only a certain level you can get to by staying in Australia. At some point if you really want to lift your skills, you have to go and expose yourself to new and more challenging terrains, like the Scandinavian forests.
Is it true that you’ve got an album coming out soon?
Yeah, that’s a little bit exciting! That’s definitely been something to keep me busy and interested this year. In some ways, it’s been bad timing, because I haven’t been able to do the launch gigs that I had planned, but in other ways I’ve been able to devote a lot of time to really crafting the album and hopefully maximising how I get it out to the world. The recording session came about in between my time in Denmark and Sweden, I actually made a bit of a mistake and I thought my move-in date in Sweden was a week earlier than it actually was. So I suddenly had a week free in Scandinavia with absolutely nothing in my calendar. A couple months earlier I’d heard of this program that the Icelandic government has at the moment, where they pay for 25% of your costs if you record music in Iceland. So it seemed like the perfect chance to make the most of that. It was incredible being over there surrounded by beautiful landscapes and really wonderful people to meet and work with. It was pretty inspiring.
What’s the album called and what can we expect from it?
The album’s called Eldorado – it’s named after the tiny country town where my grandparents used to live. When I was growing up it was kind of like my childhood home in many ways. I’d describe the music as sort of halfway between jazz and classical. There are some improvised sections, but most of it is more reflective, sort of peaceful contemporary classical music. I think it has the potential to be enjoyed on many levels. It could be used as background music but equally, I tried to add lots of interesting harmonic movements in there, so if you are interested in music on that level, you can also get things out of it.
Since your exchange got cut short, you’ve come back to a world of restrictions in Melbourne. How have you coped with that? It must have been hard adjusting form the adventure of being overseas.
Yeah, it has been a bit of a shock to the system. I actually decided I was going to come home at 11 o’clock one night, and then I was on a flight at 7:30 the next morning! It was a bit of a sudden change. Since I’ve been back, there have been mixed things. Obviously, it’s been great being able to spend time with family again and the little bits where I’ve been able to catch up with friends have been great as well. It was a little bit disappointing not getting to do some of the travelling I was hoping for, but at the same time I feel quite lucky compared to most people that I haven’t had my work or livelihood affected. Also, I’d say it’s been a mixed success in how I’ve coped with the lockdown. I’ve had weeks, like everyone has, where I’ve felt low on motivation and struggled to get going. But recently, I’ve been able to keep busy with uni starting up again and all this work to do with releasing my music. That gives a kind of balance and structure, so I’m coping a lot better now than I was at some stages.
What’s your plan from here on?
It’s a little bit uncertain. Just at the moment I’m researching options for postgrad study, potentially looking at going back to Europe for some kind of Masters degree. But I’m at a bit of a turning point now, I haven’t quite decided yet whether for the next period I’ll be focusing on my Economics studies, or be more focused on my music. We’ll wait and see. I have some decisions to make in the next couple months!
This one may be a bit out of the blue, but can you think of the best advice you’ve ever received?
Ooh, okay. Actually I think this was something from my time at Trinity. I remember when I was in Junior School, the Senior School Captain, Rohan Barmanray, came down and spoke to some of us when we were in Yr 6. He gave us all a picture of himself giving a very cheesy pose with a thumbs up, and it said “Are you testing your limits?”. He told us to pin it up on our wall and have that as a reminder. And I did actually keep that pinned up on my wall for pretty much the whole time I was at school, as a little reminder to keep pushing myself and I like to think I’m still doing that now.
You can now pre-order Pat’s album on Vinyl, CD or Digital or listen to the first single here.
