Those big, black bush mosquitoes are biting through my hair. They would bite through a horse blanket. As usual there is a component of free jazz and just free improvisation at Wangaratta this year, and at an exceptionally high level. Whenever I walk under the light canopy of the bush, where sounds glimmer in the indeterminate distance, drop at my shoulder with the first streaks of rain; snipe, sting, rattle briefly, sound singly, in relays, or simultaneously, I think of the field of free music. In the bush no sound is a wrong note. Yet there is no discernible system. They seem random, yet perfect, inevitable; and some free music aims at that: the mystery of things just happening.
Melbourne band Pateras/Baxter/Brown was very much in that direction. Anthony Pateras played a prepared piano – prepared according to John Cage’s actual prescription – and this took the instrument some distance away from the vast yet now familiar systems of pianism. Guitarist Dave Brown’s instrument was also prepared. Minimal alterations to Sean Baxter’s drum kit, but he expanded and blurred its edges with sheets of junk metal and randomised it by dropping cylindrical sticks – sometimes in small tumbles, sometimes in a clattering rainstorm – which jumped at antic angles all over the drums and cymbals.
Despite all this, the music had a powerful drive – the mysterious drive of chance, and of collective impulses. It was quite wonderful, cleansing the audio palate, yet full of musical dynamism, sometimes violent. There is a great deal of predatory violence going on in the bush, but what we hear of it a lot of the time combines in an intricate haze that gives us, paradoxically, that sense of bushland peace. By Saturday the rain was persistent, spoiling things for small stallholders, but sending the listener often inward toward powerful responses.
American festival headliners Oliver Lake, Baikida Carrol and Pheeroan akLaff were free in a very different way. Their sound world was an extension of jazz, blues and gospel traditions – with some remarkable connections, for those who listened for them, to 20th century concert music. Some pieces began as instrumental chatter, as tiny motifs and themes proposed and sometimes extended, sometimes scribbled over: Oliver Lake’s angry alto saxophone jabbers were often retracted before Carrol’s open, placatory, lyrical trumpet tone, and the often surprisingly light drum textures of akLaff. Lake’s little squalls too ended on surprisingly delicate high pips and squeaks. These wide interval touches, stabs, queries could move forward compositionally, like Webern, Monk, Wilbur Ware. It is a fact that many people do not get this, unless it is projected at them with this kind of authority.
Other pieces began with a remarkable unison blending of alto and trumpet, a rumbling swing, a gospel lilt. Then you would hear Lake’s lines extended, spiralling to full force instantly in a kind of spasm, reeling and slanting toward you like a whirlwind or willy willy dense with red dust. Outside Mount Isa you would sometimes see three or four willy willys in an angling dance around each other on the plain. This music was full of such elemental stuff. Then akLaff’s drums would thunder. Who did not think then of the great Russell Morris: this is the real thing, this is the real thing..? Stern, yet jittering at the edge of the rhythm in a pre-rap style many people had never heard before, Lake delivered a few of his poems, some political, caustic, funny, some brilliantly imagist. Send help! Send help! King George plays golf. I forgot to ask him how that one, about Hurricane Katrina, went, but that is close.
Oliver Lake’s solo performance in Holy Trinity Anglican cathedral was pretty much the most satisfying recital of this kind I have heard. Lake’s alto sound in these acoustics was massive yet agile, hard yet transparent. It was like amber. This is a very different alto sound world. More of the transparency and lyricism can be heard away from the microphone, as well as the hard quartz of its leading edge. It boomed down the aisle and floated in the stained glass light. High notes pierced the vaulted space above and rang there in the natural prolongation, gingery and glittering, shining and dark as old gold.
Before tying in another element of overt freedom – Re-MOVE – we’ll look at another international headliner, the Tomasz Stanko Quartet, who also played in the cathedral. The band – not Stanko alone – and yes, I thought this could have been a disaster too. Their first performance, in the Town Hall, had disappointed me a little. Stanko had a remote mike on his trumpet and the sound was not particularly direct. His playing sounded slightly unsettled as well – no surprise, as the band had just come from Japan and Korea. But in the cathedral he was absolutely connected, focused, his sound gloriously trumpet-like, you undertsand what I mean, but also unique. I don’t really think his musicians are great at this stage. Pianist Marcin Wasilewski was much praised for his accomplishment, rightly, but I mostly heard Herbie Hancock on the one hand and McCoy Tyner on the other. But so what? They are young, certainly developing, and they give Stanko a very empathetic setting. Also they are very nice fellows, which makes it hard to criticise them. Jessica Nicholas and John Shand in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have described Stanko’s playing as well as I can, but I might add an observation or two. Just as Louis Armstrong created a structure on which countless trumpeters could climb and ultimately find their own wings, so can the influence of Miles be felt in the majority of outstanding trumpet stylists from the late 1950s on. Trumpeters as apparently different as Kenny Wheeler, Lester Bowie and… yes, Tomasz Stanko. New ways that notes could be curved, subtle tempering of notes along with arias of practically barbaric force; new ways of playing with non-swing rhythms. Stanko is two years younger than I am. Somebody said he looked older. Quite likely, but in a way it made me wish I looked as old as he did. His presence and every note spoke of a dedication to exploring the possibilities inherent in those trumpet revelations. In the cathedral the sound was both unified and projected. The long interwoven high trills and rolling progressions, like a silver sleeve of sound unravelling, that Stanko sent along the vaulting were absolutely thrilling. I cupped my ears upward sometimes to catch the brilliant overtones.
I could stop here, because these events alone justify Wangaratta’s reputation. As we are in the cathedral, let us give praise! The organisers did put one foot wrong, and that was schedulling the Wangaratta premierre of Five Bells, Miroslav Bukovsky’s major work for Sydney band Ten Part Invention, at 11 0’clock on Friday night. It was poorly attended, yet the band played to a big audience next day. A brilliant reading of favourites from their repertoire too, but while the band had its difficulties with the new work, there was something powerful and special about the Fiday night performance – with an extraordinary reading by actor Tony Barry of the Kenneth Slessor poem on which the work is based. I think it is going to take a while before the important qualities of this work sink in.
Re-Move. ‘NB – Any performer in the context of Re-MOVE is, of course, a Removalist (of obstacles).’ That’s what it says in the program, and I have to admit that these arch, simplistically tricky formulae (the brackets and the mixed upper and lower case are EX[crew]see?Ateing) have given me the screaming shits for many many years, and yet David Tolley always delivers the goods. His band played very freely of course, but with some nods to a past shared by some members – Tolley and Ted Vining particularly – and it was engrossing and at times powerful. Ren Walters and Tony Hicks were able to revisit the presumably renegotiated revivalism (good god, I’m doing it myself!) as freely as the others.
I believe Roger Manins’s New Zealand Trio were specially good. I heard sweet, euphoric passages of Melburnians Aaron Choulai Sextet and Way Out West, both of whom I’ve heard in full recently. Another headline group, Swedish trio EST sounded kind of cheesy to me. Sorry. They drew huge ecstatic crowds. As I’d heard the Bernie McGann Quartet recently too, and been frustrated on one occasion by McGann’s disinclination to play near the microphone (he didn’t have to when he played much more forcefully, but I’d like to be able to hear the subtler beauties of his current approach), I thought I’d only hear a bit of this, but they played so beautifully I found myself listening to the end. The sound was excellent. Warwick Alder was in superb form. Likewise McGann.
Because it was about the first thing I heard, I almost forgot to mention the outstanding music, influenced by Cuban sacred rhythms, of Barney McCall’s band Mother Of Dreams And Secrets. Within a few days I will be hearing Barney playing this music at Sydney’s Sound Lounge, so I might wait until then before committing more words to it on this site. According to all critics and punters who saw it, Peter Gaudion’s Tribute To Satchmo, was a glorious event. I can’t always justify missing something at Wangaratta. There is so much music that the time will come when I simply have to take a walk in the dripping green-grey bush, no matter what’s on, in order to hear the music freshly.
Everyone was raving about blues singer and guitarist Alvin ‘Youngblood’ Heart. The Melbourne Women’s Jazz Festival Sextet was great, and Triptych, a piano trio from Adelaide, displayed high ability and panache. This year’s Wangaratta award was for vocalists. It was won by Elana Stone, with Jo Lawry and Kristin Beradi placing second and third.
Despite the rain, or in some strange way abetted by it, this Wangaratta Festival was a very special one for me.
Editor’s note: Because of its importance it was our intention to have this year’s festival covered by both John Clare and Peter Jordan so that as many groups as possible, particularly those which are yet little known outside their own states, could be brought to the readers’ notice. However, due to unforeseen circumstances Peter was unable to attend. Peter Rechniewski’s reflections on several performances as well as some general remarks about the festival as an event will appear shortly.