Heinz Dabernig, AATA Roll of Honour

In Honour of
Heinz Dabernig

Heinz started learning the accordion at age nine. This is what he writes about his accordion career:

"My First teacher was an unsighted (blind) man in Spittal, Austria. I had only been taking lessons from him for about six months when my parents decided to migrate to Australia.

In 1954 my parents organised lessons for me at the Adelaide School of Music in King William St in Adelaide. They were group lessons and because the two most popular instruments back then were the piano accordion and the banjo mandolin, the groups were large. I was a quick learner and the group lessons were less than ideal for me. A private teacher was found. Also an Austrian by birth, Johann Stiftner formed an accordion orchestra and we rehearsed once a week at the German Club in Flinders St Adelaide. My experience with the orchestra has stood me in good stead. I also played for the Bavarian traditional dance group, also affiliated with the German Club and rehearsing on a different night. All good experience. In about 1960, at the age of sixteen I started teaching accordion for the Ron Pearce School of Music in Hindley St Adelaide.

I had formed my own band at about fourteen years of age and most weekends would have me playing functions. I was fortunate to have band members that were better and older than I was. This not only made me strive hard to be as good as them, it also solved the transport problem. In 1970 (or perhaps 71) I permanently moved to Melbourne to become a house musician at the Cuckoo Restaurant in the Dandenong Ranges where I worked for about four years.

At this time I also started to give private tuition for accordion and classical guitar from a separate music studio at my house in East Ringwood, an outer suburb of Melbourne. My students regularly competed at local Eisteddfods as well as the National Accordion Championships. During this time I formed the Eastern Suburbs Accordion Orchestra. This orchestra as well as spin off groups (quartet, quintet) contested many competitions as well as performances in a great variety of settings.

In the mid eighties I organised for one of my then star students Branko Tomazic to go to Toronto in Canada to further his free bass studies with Joseph Macherollo at the Conservatory of Music in that city.

I currently still teach two nights a week as well as play in a restaurant three nights a week. In my spare time I manage a fairly large music store in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs with my business partner Colin Steele.