17th Wangaratta Festival Of Jazz (2006)
by John Clare
That many of us draw pleasure from the bushland heat is an irony at this time. It fills our belly as we walk, on dry clay and rural pavements. The land is brown, sepia, smoke-grey, Manila, from Sydney to Wangaratta, with bales of hay that are all the use that can be found for failed crops. This can make us depressed or irrationally angry.
So it is with the extreme expressions of music, perhaps most particularly the area called with some inaccuracy free jazz. Wangaratta is the place where some of the extreme joys and darknesses of this music can be experienced, along with a richness of traditional and mainstream joys. This year we heard triumphant survivors of the first European wave – in all their whimsy and raucous exhilaration – and we heard mutations created by generations in their wake, and we heard a meeting of the two that was full of tension, and perhaps some irrational anger drawn from a time before the hostile duetist was born.
This could be an exaggeration, but Elliott Dalgleish – for it is he – was no more than a babe when pianist Misha Mengelberg first slighted Eric Dolphy in Berlin; and again in a book, apparently.
Dalgleish and Mengelberg – who was here as a part of the ICP Orchestra – did not really duet. Mengelberg played calmly, sparely, eliciting a beautiful piano sound. Dalgleish just burst in on him at intervals on alto, soprano and sopranino saxophone. Mengelberg, old, feathery-haired, delicately hunched at the keyboard, sometimes acknowledged this near-psychotic rudeness, this utter lack of respect, by ironically repeating a major scale or a triadic figure beneath the saxophone.
Dalgleish’s sopranino bursts were most electrifying, partly because they were so high. Full of twittering microtones and screams, they burst like a flock of angry birds from the zenith of the sky. Many found this unpleasant and even painful. Not me. Many walked out. I understand. And so it went on. Moments of lovely interaction were welcome, yet part of me did not want that to go on too long, because it would spoil the psychodrama before us.
At the end Mengelberg wanted Elliot to play some Monk with him. Dalgleish, by now sitting against the far wall in the Elliott slump, expressed little interest. Misha started talking about Thelonious Monk’s music. Elliott interjected, `What about Eric Dolphy?’ There it was. Mengelberg said that he did not like Dolphy’s compositions. Elliott said, `I do, but I don’t think he needed a band to play them.’
Bear with me. This is very strange. Mengelberg said that he had recommended a famous composition teacher in Paris to Dolphy: `That bitch. She had some tricks. What’s her name…?’
`**Nadia Boulanger**,’ I supplied from the audience. A weird moment, as if I had stepped in and straight out of history. That was quite enough from me. The conversation went on for a bit. Did Boulanger teach Poulenc some of her tricks? The slumped Elliott neither knew nor cared, though I suspect he did know. Stravinsky? Elliott doubted it. Then Mengelberg began to play and Elliot rose and delivered a ravishing melody on alto. Was it Dolphy, or was it Feather by Hale Smith, which Elliott thinks was by Dolphy?
Anyway, Elliott played a couple of beautiful tunes that were definitely fast Dolphy slowed down – as if to say `cop this!’ – while Misha comped like Monk.
I left them talking together with apparent affection. Mengelberg later said that Dalgleish was `a devil’ but he had enjoyed it. Yes, I felt like killing Elliott too.
The Scott Tinkler/Paul Grabowsky/ Philip Rex/ Ken Edie band might have been the last thing I needed after all that tension. It was exactly what I needed. Here were dissonance and ferocity, explosions and uncanny mutual changes of direction (several tunes from their repertoire were treated as motifs within their continuous set), but all in accord, and this time it expressed an exultation beyond most music. Here was the possibility that the world might not end with a long whimper of drought but with a glorious cataclysm.
The packed Town Hall roared approval. Drummer Ken Edie from Brisbane might not be known to you. For years he has had an underground following in Sydney, comprised of myself, drummer Simon Barker and my son Mathew. Ken Edie was like a tiger, stalking each soloist, strewing the ground with intricate rhythmic subdivisions, sometimes hitting his big cymbal with the effect of a bullet ricocheting off rock, sustaining its electric oscillation with a flick. How can Philip Rex play the double bass so fast without sacrificing hugeness of tone? Grabowsky played like a man possessed and Tinkler was at the very top of his form.
Likewise trumpeter Phil Slater, leading his quartet – bassist Lloyd Swanton, pianist Matt McMahon, drummer Simon Barker – on the previous night, through passages of ethereal beauty – the music floating forward like a mist, with dramatic cat-strikes quickening the pulse – and passages of pile-driving rhythm. A very complete and thrilling performance.
The ICP (Instant Composers Pool) Orchestra was part of a Dutch contingent at Wangaratta, which is in turn part of a cultural exchange program running throughout 2006. Very little has been made of this exchange so far. Great God, these are men and a woman from the land of Gerard Mercator and of the Dutch East India Company with its early collisions with the coast of Western Australia. Not to mention Vermeer, Ruisdael, Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
The abovementioned pioneers include Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink (a Wangaratta perennial) and cellist Tristan Hollinger. Younger (in varying degrees) players include alto saxophonist, clarinet and bass clarinetist Michael Moore who, between button-holing oil company executives, has played at Wangaratta with Han Bennink (and was thrown out by security guards this year while trying to interview Adrian Jackson as to why yet another Jackson won the piano competition!), violinist and violist Mary Oliver, bassist Ernst Glerum and trombonist Wolter Wierbos. All have been involved in improvisation – some also with contemporary classical music – for decades.
The ICP began with a string trio which, if it was pre-composed represented a prodigious feat of memory, or if improvised a remarkable feat of spontaneous composition. It is habitual with some to liken all modern string writing or improvising to Bartok, and indeed there were some passing similarities. As this exciting work wound down the rest of the orchestra appeared on stage and began a kind of New Orleans march. Solos were punctuated by riffs, some amusingly bellicose and some sweetly crooning, as from ancient times.
On a second hearing a couple of nights later I was struck by the difference in approach on each occasion – the second characterised by a freer dispersion of sound and texture and by lovely string playing within the ensemble – and also by the beautiful sound each player produced on his or her instrument. But back to the first hearing.
I hope some of our traditional players were in the hall to hear the fantastic swing of the Europeans and the way they connected the traditional, the modern and the avant-garde with humour and fire. And I hoped the Europeans heard, for instance, Brett Iggulden’s Jazz Hounds at the Pinsent or Bulls Head. Without seeming to try, these avant-garde pioneers, like the great trad players, appeared as personae in some Shakespearian comedic drama.
I was particularly taken by Tobias Delius’s tenor saxophone solos which, with their rumbling gruffness and harsh/humorous exclamations and the way this big sound and sometimes rough textural play all danced so deftly on the time, swinging like mad, seemed related in a European way to Archie Shepp. Raucous riffs were now extended in sustained, dissonant roars and starbursts. At the end the ensemble playing an irresistibly rolling, running passage that seemed oddly familiar. Then I recognised it. This was the section played by the saxophones on Duke Ellington’s 1952 extended performance of Perdido (on the LP Ellington Uptown). The saxophones here were arranged by the great Ellingtonian clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton.
Each of the European ensembles had humour excitement, diversity and feeling in large measures, yet each was quite different. An absolute highlight of the festival came right near the end when the great local Tim O’Dwyer Trio joined forces with Dutch visitors, Eric Boeren (trumpet), Wilbert De Jood (bass) and Michael Vatcher (drums). Boeren has been to Wangaratta before. His shining cornet playing was if anything even more impressive this time, but the double trio was the thing, firing the imagination from so many angles when you thought the limits of this music might have been reached. O’Dwyer’s trio (their Broken River CD is strongly recommended) are Tim (alto and bass clarinet) Clayton Thomas (bass) and Darren Moore (drums).
Geri Allen seemed perhaps jet-lagged the first night I heard her, but I went again because she is one of my favourite pianists, and the pianist on some of my favourite records, including Decision In Paradise by Frank Lowe and the two volumes of Sound Museum with Ornette Coleman. Indeed it was much better, in fact superb…and yet the music seemed to be held under a glass bell jar compared to so much else I heard.
Niko Schauble’s TD5 had all the people I wanted to hear, yet failed to excite me on the day. Likewise the Jamie Oehlers Quartet. In traditional and mainstream areas, Carol Ralph’s Blue Rhythm Band, Brett Iggulden of course, the Erroll Buddle Quartet, the Dave Panichi Septet and Stevenson’s Rockets were inspiring. It is imposible to hear everything.
In a direct-from-the-stage ABC broadcast a pared down Australian Art Orchestra played a fine set, including two great compositions from the old Clarion Fracture Zone songbook. Among the outstanding soloists were guitarist Carl Dewhurst, tenor saxophonist Sandy Evans, violinist John Rogers, Phil Slater and that problematic near-genius Elliott Dalgleish.
Problematic for some, it seemed, was The Messiaen Project presented in Holy Trinity cathedral by trumpeter Eugene Ball, pianist Marc Hannaford and drummer Joe Talia. For this Ball and Hannaford had written a series of pieces inspired by Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet For The End Of Time. In this music the interval often assumed more importance than continuous melody. The interval was a motif in itself, transposed through registers and only then breaking into a light melodic, rhythmic run.
For some this also had the glass bell jar effect. So contained, so deliberate, measured and spare, so delicate it in its way. I found it very satisfying. Talia was superb. Ball’s ability to create trumpet tone at a mezzo-forte level was outstanding. Hannaford was even more impressive as a finalist in the piano competition. Two-handed, contrapuntal, rhythmically singular and intriguing, his unaccompanied version of Monk’s Ask Me Now was another highlight of the festival. I can’t hide the fact that I thought he should have won. Hannaford came second, Aaron Choulai third, and the winner was Jackson Harrison. I hasten to add that the Jackson victory was probably a coincidence, but, damn it, it was fishy!
Seriously, Harrison was nothing short of superb.
I missed Luis Valle’s Afro Timba from Cuba, but believe they were enormous fun. Andrea Keller’s band was heavenly. Perhaps even more so her collaboration with bassist Tamara Murphy and drummer Allan Browne.
As usual, some of the contemporary events drew big crowds and were rapturously received. At the same time I heard the usual jazzer comment: `I don’t know why they can’t play some toe-tapping music.’ Toe tapping? What do they want, the businessman’s bounce? Some of this had me stamping my foot. Still, everybody is entitled to have particular expectations, just as I did with Geri Allen.
As usual, music of many kinds rained and hailed down at Wangaratta.