Composer and author · Wellington · Sydney
Hello Beautiful People.
I am going to tell you my story, as if you were sitting having a coffee with me, and we were old chums. It will be warts and all, with all the serious stuff, sad stuff, humiliating stuff and funny stuff. And if there’s one thing I hope you take from all this, it’s to laugh when you can, in the face of adversity, just to show it who’s boss.
What’s it all about?
I am Andrew Stopps, and I am a man with a story to tell. About how in 2005, I survived a brain tumour that left me deaf in my right ear. Then in 2021, I survived two strokes that left me unable to speak clearly or move my right side. My story is about the human condition and dealing with adversity. You’ll also learn about love, strength, resilience, grief, laughter, embarrassment, humiliation and sheer bloody mindedness.
But before all of that, I am an artist. A composer. An author. And I am Andrew Stopps.
The symphony
I Am
A Symphonic Memoir
A prelude and four movements in A minor that follow my stroke from the inside, written as a companion to my memoir. It begins on an ordinary last day and ends, four movements later, on hope. As the music reaches the stroke, the right side of the orchestra falls silent, the way the right side of my body did.
Writing
The books.
As Far As My Eyes Can See – Coming Soon
In the summer of 1980, five teenagers found each other in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. For a few short weeks they were inseparable, singing Fleetwood Mac around a guitar, crammed into a Morris Minor, certain the whole world was ahead of them. Then the summer ended and they scattered.
Decades later, after a stroke ended his music career and took both his parents, Andrew Stopps goes home to Adelaide looking for that feeling of safety again. What he finds is not what he expected. As Far As My Eyes Can See...
The Secondary Music Teacher’s Guide
The Secondary Music Teacher's Guide is a practical, plain-language handbook for anyone starting out teaching music in a secondary school. It cuts through the jargon to explain how things actually work, from funding and staffing to the day-to-day decisions of running a music programme. Written for real classrooms rather than theory, it gives new teachers the clear, reliable guidance they need to feel confident from day one.
The Wanderlight Chronicles – Coming Soon
Book 1. The Green Children.
Little Barrow decided what Thomas Barnes was on the day he was born, and the word changeling has trailed him ever since. He is fifteen now, a boy who reads the world through its sounds and catches what other people walk straight past, earning his coins by calling birds down from the trees for men who pay him without quite meeting his eye. The forest asks nothing of him. That is why he is out in it at dusk when he hears a sound no bird would make. At the foot...
Better Brains Podcast
Real stories, real strategies.
Listen to young stroke survivors from around the world share their raw, unfiltered experiences, recovery insights, and the sheer determination it takes to rebuild life after stroke.
RNZ Concert Interview
