Danger Music

Eddie Ayres has a lifetime of musical experience, from learning the viola as a child in England and playing with the Hong Kong Philharmonic for many years, to learning the cello in his thirties and landing in Australia to present an extremely successful Australian morning radio show. But all of this time Eddie was Emma Ayres. In 2014 Emma was spiraling into a deep depression, driven by anguish about her gender. She quit the radio, traveled, and decided on a surprising path to salvation—teaching music in a war zone. Emma applied for a position at Dr. Sarmast's renowned Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul, teaching cello to orphans and street kids. In Danger Music, Eddie takes us through the bombs and chaos of Kabul, into the lives of the Afghan children who are transported by Bach, Abba, Beethoven and their own exhilarating Afghan music. Alongside these epic experiences, Emma determines to take the final steps to secure her own peace; she becomes the man always there inside—Eddie.

Eddie Ayres accepted a position teaching cello, viola and double bass to Afghanistan's children in 2016 at the world-renowned Afghanistan National Institute of Music. Amid the chaos and unpredictability of life in war-savaged Kabul, Emma realized she had to accept her future and returned to Australia to begin transitioning from female to male. In 2016, Emma became Eddie.