Ed Le Brocq

Ed Le Brocq, previously known as Emma, Ed or Eddie Ayres (born 1967), is a musician, music teacher, radio presenter and writer. He is notable for his work on the Australian ABC Classic radio station, as well as for his numerous charitable efforts and memoirs about his transition as a transgender man.

Early life and education Born in Dover in 1967, Ayres grew up in Shrewsbury, switching to viola when he was twelve. However the cello was his first love. Miserable in early adolescence, Ayres self-harmed.

He graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and did further studies at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where he received a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship; at the Royal Academy in London, with the assistance of a Countess of Munster Musical Trust scholarship; and at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.

By 2014, he was living in the inner-west suburb of Glebe with a new partner in Sydney. that he would be leaving at the end of the year. In July 2014, he appeared on the Musica Viva channel with an interview to camera: Chamber Music & Me. In October 2014, ABC FM radio's Classic Breakfast website announced that he had "chosen to hang up [his] headphones and move on to new adventures". after Ellen Fanning had been announced in September 2014 as temporary successor. Ayres later revealed that the real reason for his departure was that he was suffering from major depression at the time. Later that year he moved to Kabul, where he began teaching violin, viola and cello at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. He came out as transgender in that year. From December 2017, when it was created as The Art Hub, until mid-January 2020 (after renaming as The Art Show), Ayres presented an hour-long program on Radio National about art. Ayres had developed an interest in art after learning about it from his brother, Tim, an artist.

He appeared at both Adelaide Writers' Week and Sydney Writers' Festival in 2018.

In 2019, Ayres returned to ABC Classic to present Weekend Breakfast.

Other roles Ayres has been involved in a number of charitable efforts. In 2000, he raised money by making a twelve-month cycling trip from Shropshire in England to Hong Kong.

In 2017 Ayres narrated "Not Quite the Night Before Christmas" as part of a live performance with a capella group The Idea of North and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which was made into an album called A World of Christmas.

He was on the board of Green Music Australia, retiring in 2018.

Ayres has been involved in the Melbourne-based charity Hush Foundation, which uses the arts to improve young patients' lives in hospitals.

Personal life and family Ayres has a brother, Tim Ayres, an artist who lives and works in the Netherlands, and whose work is held in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the New York Public Library, and by members of the Dutch royal family. and Ed took her surname.

Artist Jaq Grantford asked Le Brocq's permission to paint a portrait of him, and he requested to be represented as a centaur. This related to the story of Chiron in Greek mythology, who was a teacher and mentor to many Greek heroes, and spurned violence in favour of wisdom and intellect. It is also a personal nickname used by his wife, which symbolises his "acceptance of his true self". The painting, called I Am a Centaur, was selected as a 2024 Archibald Prize finalist. One of Grantford's children is transgender, so she saw the painting as a way to support her child and the transgender community as well.

Gender transition Ayres wrote about gender in his 2014 memoir, Cadence: Travels with music - a memoir, narrating his experiences of being thought of as a man during his bicycle travels in countries such as Pakistan. after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

He changed his name to Ed Le Brocq when he married in 2022.

Books

Cadence: Travels with music – a memoir Cadence (2014) is an autobiographical story of Ayres's life and thoughts during his bicycle travels. is an autobiographical account dealing with Ayres's experiences and feelings during his time from early 2015 at Afghanistan's National Institute of Music in Kabul, leading up to his decision to fully transition to male gender. By early 2016 at the age of 49, he had received a double mastectomy. In his last three months in Afghanistan, after he returned from his mastectomy, he began living as a man, riding motorcycles around Kabul wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. The book ends back in Australia with Eddie's first testosterone injection to initiate the chemical change to a man. On 17 November he appeared at Avid Reader's first Summer Reading Guide launch of the 2017 season with author Robert Whyte in presentations followed by a joint discussion. Ayres wrote about Danger Music for The Guardian; "Moving to a war zone was better than living with what was in my head" appeared on Sunday 24 September 2017, essentially an excerpt from the book (p. 5).

Sonam and the Silence Sonam and the Silence (2018)

Whole Notes Whole Notes (2021) is a follow-up to Danger Music, and about music and identity. One critic described it as "...a compendious love letter to music, the viola (Ayres’ first love) and musical education". In it, he describes how he found the bravery to transition through the power of music. Whole Notes was shortlisted for the 2022 nonfiction Age Book of the Year.