To look down through the bush in the fresh morning, the ground strewn with sunlight, dead, crisp, biscuit-coloured gumleaves, bark strips, russet grasses deepening to watery blood, ferns, pale long shadows, with touches of olive brown water – storage batteries of energy – is as nourishing to the soul as church bells and the smiles of old ladies walking slowly to the rector, who waits cordially by the door of Wangaratta’s Holy Trinity Cathedral. Or the stained glass windows of St Patricks: the side ones at the back which always deliver a burning nostalgia for Port Phillip and the lanes and arcades down toward Flinders Street. Why this should be so – why sun through rose and amber and hard red and royal blue should touch such specific memories – is as mysterious as the effects of chords in music.
I was in sore need of such balm at Wangaratta this year. For the first time at this wonderful event I actually felt like God: exalted at times but given also to convulsions of homicidal wrath, a disposition shared by Dutch Schultz.
I was full of stress already, I admit, just out of hospital where my heart rate had dropped to 35 before climbing up to hypertension, but this was exacerbated by something which affected many others. Some band leader demanded that people be denied access to a venue during his performance. The poor volunteers at the doors were instructed to apply this rule universally. Of course they could not imprison folk in there, so people were allowed to leave, and then they ushered in a few of those who were waiting. Long queues waited for the beginnings of many events anyway. There were many things I could not get into. Nothing to be done about that; but when I told musicians that I was unable to see them and they said, ‘What? There were empty seats in there,’ anger began to mount.
The festival will anger and alienate the multitudes if artists are going to be that precious. You have to leave some things part way through in order to catch part of an overlapping event – and you enter that during the performance. A stream of people going in and out can be annoying. The solution is to have the people wait until the end of a piece and let them in during the applause and the announcement of the next tune. I know it’s an additional burden for the volunteers, but they have to glance in to see if the applause is for a solo or at the end of a tune. This is what they have always done. They always tell you to make as little sound as possible going in there.
Soon after leaving the train on Friday afternoon – after a furious half hour’s walk out with bag and strained hip, newly inflamed stomach ulcer and rising blood pressure, to my lodgings, and another half hour’s furious walk back – I slipped into the empty Town Hall and listened to Paul Grabowsky, Katie Noonan, Phillip Rex, Scott Tinkler and Simon Barker rehearsing the Grabowsky settings of Dorothy Porter poems. Never heard of D. Porter, I’m afraid; but this was soul’s balm. Although some of the intervals were far from easy to sing, Noonan was clear and relaxed, pulling herself casually into line on one diabolical little number of ambivalent tonality. In the high register she can sound quite like Shelley Scown. Scott Tinkler is playing a smaller bore trumpet currently and has relaxed the quite brutal determination to stay on paths of his own beating. Still, he sounds like no one else. The lyricism he allows himself is very different.
These high voices floated and entwined and occasionally glared brass through the soothing dark. Grabowsky, Rex and Barker casually batted them about from below. Songs were left unfinished because they presented no more problems. Sometimes a rehearsal like this can be more satisfying than any of the intense performances that follow. Unable to gain admittance to the actual performance, I heard much of it from the wings – sonically always frustrating for me, but it still sounded very very good. It was art music, a nice contrast to the mounting clamour of street cred.
Even further in that direction went the Tord Gustavsen Trio from Norway. I understand that they were the first band to insist that nobody enter during their performance, and I can understand it. This courtesy should be extended to international visitors if requested.
They were remarkably quiet, yet their collective and indvidual presence was large. As with Bryce Rhode last year, some found them too sedated. I did not. It was very beautiful, full of melody and of subtle rhythmic currents. Drummer Jarie Vespestad displayed a most remarkable control of detail at a very low dynamic level. Down there he could bump his bass drum so that it rang with overtones that would have been shattered by a harder kick. In fact the ring and moderate boom of the drum seemed to shoot out along a precise tubular path. Bass players might well correct me, but Harold Johnsen seemed to use a technique employed by pianist Roger Woodward when he plays Debussy – that is, he (Roger) holds his foot on the loud pedal but plays very lightly. Johnsen seemed to have his amp turned up a fair way, but likewise played with an extremely light touch (heavy metal guitarists do this too). The sound was very wide yet very articulate. However he did it, he produced a superb tone, a grey-dark magisterial Norwegian sound in perfect balance with the other two. I heard some Mingus in there, surprisingly. Pianist Tord Gustavsen, thirty but looking like a slight, sensitive but precocious boy seemed to magnify intensity the more delicately he played, and there were times I thought he would etherialise. This recital got a resounding ovation. Rightly.
Saturday. Could not get in to En Rusk. Got really angry at this point, but fascinated that even little known adventurous bands like this were sold out. Sick, tired. Walked in bush and had lunch, forgetting about Eugene Ball and Tony Gould in Holy Trinity completely (although I later saw a solo recital and charming, rambling dissertation by clarinetist Tony Gorman in there). Angrier still for missing them (my own fault). Could not get into Dave Leibman with the Guilfoyle-Nielsen Trio but heard them from backstage. Quite exciting but much more so when I heard them straight on at Sydney’s Basement a few days later.
It is easy to see how the Irishmen could wrong foot a critic or two. To begin with, they looked so…Irish …that you tended to listen for something awry in their jazz playing. It was certainly different. At the Basement they took their time moving through oblique lines and broken rhythms to reach a point of absolutely scorching intensity. This was a Coltrane-like vamp from around the period of Africa Brass and, because of the electric guitar, it reminded you of how much Coltrane had influenced 1960s rock. This is an area in which categories can be truly transcended, beyond fusion, eclecticism, etc. Leibman took off on soprano saxophone and the Irishmen were up there with him. One of those inspiring visitations made possible by the great Wangaratta Festival (without which we would not have heard them in Sydney, remembering that it was SIMA who took the oportunity to present them at the Basement).
The Guilfoyle-Nielsen Trio with Jamie Oehlers was more straight ahead and intermittently exciting. Ornette Coleman’s Blues Connotation took off. Wish I had organised my time and heard Oehlers with Sam Keevers, one of my top favourite pianists. At this point let me recommend Oehler’s very fine disk The Assemblers with Sam ringing like a bell, Paul Williamson playing some very different soft pithy trumpet, etc.
Presenting Leibman in duet with Mike Nock was also inspired, although this also took some time to reach the levels of free interaction we have come to expect in Wangaratta duets. You couldn’t be far wrong if you called Leibman the greatest livng jazz exponent of the soprano.
Before that duet I heard trombonist Kynan Robinson’s (En Rusk) other band, The Electricians, in St Patricks Hall. In fact a chamber orchestra led jointly by Robinson and pianist Erik Groswald, who played prepared piano throughout. The two had composed a suite called Slow Burn utilising violinist John Rogers, viola player Errki Veltheim, trumpeter Phil Slater, saxophonist Adam Simmons, bassist Mark Shepherd, percussionist Vanessa Thomlinson and drummer Will Guthrie. The use of strings varied from an early interlude that sounded like Western-influenced Oriental pop music (with the prepared piano most apposite) to a later section that sounded somewhat like Webern. While this ensemble obviously has some way to go, it was enthralling, sometimes very exciting and always atmospheric. You hear things like this at Wangaratta.
Guy Strazullo’s Passionfruit was a lovely morning band. Later on Sunday I heard Prrim, with trombonist/flautist/percussonist Adrian Sherriff, acoustic bass guitarist Chris Hale and percussionist Tunji Beier. This was another of those special Wangaratta choices (as was Passionfruit). Sherriff has studied with master teachers of voice, flute and percussion throughout Asia, but still plays the trombone, of which he is a high virtuoso. Still happy to talk about jazz trombonists and the inspirational playing of Pharoah Sanders too, I discovered.
Allan Browne with Stephen Grant (whom I saw recently playing piano accordian in Sydney with Julian Wilson and Steve Magnussen) on trumpet, also clarinetist Jo Stevenson, guitarist/banjoist John Scurry and bassist Howard Cairns were my only draft of traditional jazz, clear and sparkling, and light.
Sydney band The Freedivers, led by alto saxophonist Mathew Clare played two sets. My Sydney Morning Herald colleague John Shand critic approached me later and said, ‘Mathew has the loveliest alto sound in the country,’ and I don’t suppose I’d argue too bitterly about that. At times he sounded like a flame, a disembodied spirit.
Somehow I did not get with Twelve Tone Diamonds, even though Julian Wilson had told me they were his favourite band. Alister Spence frowned when I said I hadn’t found them more than pleasant on the day, and said, ‘No, they built up.’ I should have stayed longer.
I did, however, enjoy Diamonds pianist and electric keyboardist Thai Matus later with the Ren Waters’ Group. Melbourne guitarist Waters is a rarely acknowledged pioneer, having presented quite various ensembles of electric and acoustic instruments, blending jazz, classical and rock in a very different way to any of the ‘fusion’ movements, using sound samples in an improvisational and compositional situation for decades now. Trumpet and trombone often played scurrying chromatic passages like a kind of hard confetti thrown at you, or resonant lines with sustained notes against much bubbling electric activity. Towards the end it all became quite grand and symphonic in feeling, with Eamon McNelis’s trumpet blazing powerfully. It all ended suddenly with the voice sample with which it had begun.
A list of the bands I did not see would be extensive and would in itself make an impressive festival program. Several musicians and fans said I was mad to have missed the fierce free jazz of The Kris Wanders Unit, with Leibman as a spontaneous guest. I just bloody well forgot them. Let me recommed their disc On The Edges Of Silence on Newmarket.
In the drum competition my favourites were Lawrence Pike, who drove the band with overwhelming force, Evan Mannell, most relaxed and different sounding jazz drummer since John Pochee, and Rory McDougal, who made perhaps the most beautiful music on the drums. I emphasise that these were my favourites on their showing in the comp. Felix Bloxom won (my tip months ago), Craig Simon ran up and Dave Goodman, who really powered in the final, came third.
* John Clare’s son is alto saxophonist Mathew Clare, leader of The Freedivers.