Originally from England, Natalie is the youngest and least South African member of the band. Her first gig with the group was on Bain’s Kloof Pass, amidst snow covered mountains, the night before she left South Africa for the first time...
Natalie’s musical life began in the womb, when her mother describes her kicking during a concert at the climax of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. As a baby she was weaned on strange Sixties music, her cradle rocked by her father’s foot as he practiced guitar. Natalie learnt to sight sing as she learnt to read and at the age of five took up violin and piano. It was around this time she began composing her first opera (alas, an unfinished opus). As a child she was thoroughly involved in the arts and soon got wise, deciding to switch her fiddle for a viola. As a youth she performed live on television and radio in an orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall and recorded for eccentric pop bands as a session musician. As an adult she graduated with a degree in Music and decided to travel to Cape Town to work for the Music Therapy Community Clinic. With this organisation and others she runs music groups for school children in Heideveld, patients at a TB hospital and teaches youth in a Junk Orchestra. She is an improvising musician with the Bonfire Theatre Company, a freelance classical performer and is really very happy to finally be in not one, but two bands! Happy enough about it to trek weekly to Wellington in the cart with Bad Horse for band practice…