My latest She’s The Boss Chats episode is with the amazing Amy Bastow (Jorgensen), composer and the Founder of the Virtual Piano Academy. It’s not often you come across a creative musician who also has a huge entrepreneurial appetite. Amy is a fabulous surprise! After being brought up by her incredibly supportive mum and Grandmother in a tiny outback NSW town, Amy was inspired to get into music, and in fact spent her teenage years in her family’s band, playing on weekends. The piano was her first love and she learned as much as she possibly could from the local piano player which her Mum organised for her in exchange cleaning her house. A sacrifice that has totally paid off!
Amy really wanted to go to uni and qualified for the Sydney Conservatorium but her Mum wasn’t able to afford the fees, so the ever-resourceful Amy won two scholarships to cover her education and accommodation and spent four years getting her degree. Once she left, she couldn’t find any work so she created a website, knocked on every door she could and ended up being rung by Channel 7 to ask her to compose for the award winning show Winners & Losers. That opened lots of doors for Amy, including working for the famous Hollywood Director, James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar) and she continued composing until COVID hit. Since then she has set up a Facebook group called Composify to support other composers, and she was still teaching piano… until her lightbulb moment came after trying to teach remotely via zoom. She has now set up the Virtual Piano Academy (wait til you hear the solution to her problem!) and intends to grow it globally. She’s also doing her MBA. This is a woman to watch!!
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