Sounds like Aimee Chapman Aimee set the stage for her career at a young age, with her work from performances to composing to event management certainly making an impression. By Dianne Dempsey - Photographs by Leon Schoots When musician Aimee Chapman was a little girl, she loved to put on concerts for her mum and dad. But young Aimee didn’t just put a tea cosy on her head and sing a couple of songs. She would plan the order of events, build the sets, do the costumes and makeup, the flyers and let’s not forget the music. In truth, as far as her multifaceted career is concerned, nothing much has changed. While Aimee is currently working as a programmer three days a week at the Emporium Creative Hub, she spends the other days and nights of her week extending her impressive repertoire as an innovative musician: composing, singing and recording. The sounds Aimee makes are a mixture of electronic music, jazz and pop. But don’t be afraid. Aimee says her particular blend of music is accessible because of her predilection for strong melody
lines. “I also like song form,” she says. “I like interesting sounds. I like people to go away humming or remembering some words from my work. It’s not so experimental that it’s going to scare people away, it’s stuff you can have in the background and hum along to.” The last performance Aimee gave was at the Phee Broadway Theatre in Castlemaine earlier in 2021, between lockdowns. “I put together a project called Coming Home, which was a real-time musical interpretation of the train journey from Southern Cross to Castlemaine Station,” she says. “Myself and three other players improvised the music against the footage.” Along with the images, the soundtrack to Coming Home is mesmerising; available online, it will give readers a far better feel for her work than any number of written words can. 29
