When an Australian band of ten pieces has played together for 21 years, presenting a repertoire comprised entirely of local compositions, with only two permanent changes of personnel – and one of those changes due to a death – it must be viewed as a phenomenon. That it can still fill a venue with excitement and colour, and infect audiences of remarkable age diversity with the feeling that they are hearing something vivid and unique, is to be celebrated.
And it is – every time they play – but its full importance is not so widely recognized as it ought to be: certainly not in terms of media exposure; nor has the band been embraced in any way by arts festivals beyond jazz, as Paul Grabowsky’s Art Orchestra has (rarely enough, admittedly). This is not to be dwelled on. Henceforth we shall celebrate the reasons why it should be more widely acknowledged rather than bewail the fact that it is not. After all, the band always draws people, and in almost every performance it creates an event. Distinguished cellist Nathan Waks sometimes turns up with friends to hear Ten Part, and on one occasion he told founding member Sandy Evans, `You shame us!’
What he meant by that is not worth pursuing. Of course he and his colleagues are not shamed. Let us treat it as a spontaneous expression of admiration for consistent and not terribly well remunerated creativity. In the Sydney Jazz Club magazine recently, Australian jazz pioneer and international ambassador Graeme Bell described a Ten Part concert he attended with a long-time sidemen in his own bands, drummer Lawrie Thompson: `This is one of my favourite bands. We came away inspired and filled with admiration for this group of great musicians put together 21 years ago by its award-winning leader, the drummer John Pochee. With arrangements by Sandy Evans, Miroslav Bukovsky and the late, great Roger Frampton, they thrilled a packed room at the Seymour Centre. All tables were occupied and dozens of listeners had to stand around the back for a riveting night of music lasting three hours with a half-hour interval.’
After another TPI concert, Graeme said to me, `Marvelous, isn’t it? Not just the soloists they’re all wonderful – but the writing, the harmonies, the voicings.’
Indeed, this is something very special. There are times with Ten Part that you seem to hear the percussive ructions of a landscape being formed. There are towering blasts in the music, often followed by lines that stream through the air: saxophone lines that spread the whole section – from soprano, or sometimes flute, down to baritone – very wide across their spectrum. It fills the space; the room brims with it. Trumpet lines are engraved through this fanning light; all of it vibrating.
Something that was noted long ago by Eric Myers and myself was the way you could hear the characteristics of all those very individual players, yet there was a blend. It reminded us in this way of the Ellington band. Myers, who apart from his then role as New South Wales Jazz Co-ordinator, led a club band for which he wrote many arrangements. He has famously good ears and is a famously or notoriously fussy listener. Myers was somewhat in awe of the excellence of the section playing. I stress this because, although many members had proved themselves as section players, each one was best known as a soloist (a few of them have at times been controversially original). At Wangaratta in 1999 Melbourne trumpeter Eugene Ball sat beside me as Ten Part took the stage. `I can’t wait to hear those trumpets Warwick Alder and Miroslav Bukovsky,’ he said. He meant the way they played together as well as their brilliant solos.
We will shortly touch on the span and diversity of the music, but it seemed time to talk with John Pochee about this phenomenon of togetherness and individuality.
Ten Part’s first performance was in the Fezbar at the 1986 Adelaide Festival, but the band had been in John Pochee’s mind since the 1960s, when he heard the album Thelonious Monk: Big Band And Quartet, which was a recording of a concert at New York’s Philharmonic Hall in 1963. Birdland has now imported a double CD reissue of the whole concert in its correct order.
‘They had two trumpets, as we do,’ said Pochee, `but some of the very high lines were played by Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone, instead of a trumpet on top all the time. I loved that light, airy feeling instead of the persistent brassiness of big band convention, and I thought I would like to put something together like that – not a small big band, but a big small band; a description that has been used a bit lately, I notice. I also wanted it to be a composers’ band.’
I should add that when trumpet does play the extreme high lead on the Monk recording, the effect is startling, because the trumpets are not doing that all the time. I mentioned that Sandy Evans had told me that she was amazed by the way Ten Part Invention played together for the first time at the festival.
`Yeah, we were rehearsing over there every day, on trucks going to schools – Roger rushing in with the ink still wet on new music. There was such a spirit, such a camaraderie, and such a respect by the younger players for the veterans, and an interest from the older players in what the younger ones were doing. A mutual respect. Once I had decided on who was going to be in the band I had a wonderful sense of excitement, wondering how it was going to sound, all those guys.
`Of course that Monk big band sound with the soprano lead was not something I imposed or even suggested. I wanted them to write in their own voices, to use the band as a way to create colours and shapes without restriction. As it happens, there are parts that have some of the feeling I first heard, with the soprano right up there. Originally, Roger was going to play soprano. He moved to piano, but there are parts where he left the piano chair to play sopranino with the saxophones or solo. On his And Zen Monk on our first (self-titled) album for the ABC, he wrote sections like that with the sopranino on top with no prompting from me.
`Many people were amazed at how we played together. People who saw Bernie McGann and me as wild men and didn’t even think that Bernie could read music. What many people don’t realise is that I was Musical Director for the Four Kinsmen, touring America, rehearsing local musicians through insanely hard arrangements. I always had that show biz side to my career, playing for Shirley Bassey and – actually I played for Cilla Black when she came out to Australia in the 1960s.
`To clear a couple of things up: we took Hugh Fraser who was still a student with us to Adelaide on bass because Steve Elphick was in America, and there was a period when Dale Barlow played in place of Sandy Evans, who was overseas on a study grant. Just the other week after a gig, (alto saxophonist) Andrew Robson sent me an email saying how great it was to play in a band of which he was a fan. Andrew waited eight years for Bernie to have a night off, and became a permanent member when Bernie retired from the band in 2002. Craig Walters has been a very reliable and creative dep on occasions. Lloyd Swanton deputised for Steve Elphick and the way he nailed the music amazed me, because I think he just took it home and looked at it the day before. Steve Arie has also done a great job on bass when Steve Elphick has been away. Of course Paul McNamara came in on piano when Roger Frampton died of brain tumor, months after his last performance with us at Wangaratta in 1999.
`**Mike (Miroslav) Bukovsky** suggested James Greening on trombone. He had played with him in Newcastle and said, ‘’This guy is going to be a motherfucker!’’ By then I had already heard him in Sydney, where he had come down to study at the Con. He was a handful at first. At 19 he had a very confused domestic life, but we felt he was worth indulging. And he was. He’s now also the complete professional. I had never met Sandy Evans, but I had heard her music. Of course Bernie and I had been playing together for decades in a number of bands, including Bernie’s trio, which is still going strong, and The Last Straw, which lasted for 25 years. Ken James was with us on tenor and soprano. Bob Bertles was an old friend and colleague and he was a natural choice. Actually we added him to our band The Heads when we came back from Melbourne in 1964. We had two altos: Bob and Bernie. I loved the way Bob played, and he and Bernie loved each other. The fact that he plays a number of instruments, his experience playing internationally in many situations, and of course the sound of his baritone in the ensembles and in solos are very important. It is true that Bob could get a little grumpy when confronted with some of Roger Frampton’s ideas, but Bob is the band’s biggest booster.
`I had played with Miroslav in a number of situations, and we were friends in the way Roger and I were. I knew that he could write but he and Roger really had nothing to write for. I had played with Warwick Alder since the early `80s and I loved his playing. I never thought beyond Warwick and Miroslav for the two trumpets, and I was not surprised at all that they played together so well. Steve Elphick I heard in a band David Martin had – Energy And Friends I think it was. I thought that’s energy for you. When I heard Steve playing, I wanted to play with him.’
There has been another very important substitution in the band. David Goodman, one of the leading drummers in the country, and a star of a younger generation, filled in for the ailing Pochee on a tour of China, the Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore in 1998, and again when Pochee was ill on the night of their 20th birthday concert at the Sound Lounge. Everybody was staggered by his performance. This is what he had to say about the band: `I love it. This is perhaps the most solid unit of the most legendary living jazz figures in Australia. And it is just as strong with Andrew Robson and Paul McNamara in place of Bernie and Roger. At the one quick birthday concert rehearsal Sandy brought in a piece called Rendezvous that no one had seen. It was not an easy piece. The pages were black with notes. In two or three runs through they nailed it. What musicians! And some of them are so underrated. Ken James, for instance. That’s the sweetest tenor tone you’ll hear.
`In China we played before Dave Holland, and the band held its own. It was very well received everywhere. Its sound is unique. I love the fact that it’s all local music. The blend of those horns is impeccable. It is like a living organism. And John. My God! He’s up there with Elvin Jones in my opinion. I remember once him telling me that an old timer looked at him and said, `Didn’t you used to be John Pochee?’ Pochee said, ``Fame hasn’t eluded me yet.’’
`He has been a father figure to me. All of them hold the torch high for original music, and it is due to the visionary nature of the mind of John Pochee. Of course the fact that they sound so great together is also a tribute to just how good the writing is.’
One of the writers is of course Sandy Evans. I asked her if the forum of Ten Part Invention had been of prime value in her development. `Absolutely,’ she said. `I get a lot from knowing who I am writing for, and the band is the most wonderful creative environment. It is extraordinary to hear your music played so well. What John has put together – those ten pieces – is perfect. It allows that flexibility between improvisation and composition, but there are plenty of colours to draw from.
`That’s a thing I’ve always loved about the Ellington band, that you can hear the individual colours in there and they all blend. Ten Part Invention has that. It is a fantastic statement that those voices can come together, yet none of them had really set out to develop a sound that would blend in ensembles. It has to do with mutual respect, and everybody believing in their own voices. That they can master hard music does no surprise me so much. In bebop, which is where many of the players came from, the notated music can be very difficult.
`The spirit is extraordinary, even after Roger died and Bernie left the spirit was there. In fact the music came together in an amazing way. That there was fresh energy and the ability to move on is a testament to John’s energy. John Pochee is a great, creative drummer. You can hear his personality in everything he plays. The way he reacts to a new piece, the way he creatively shapes it, is inspiring. He has a great ability to be in the moment and to do what he feels without fear. I think that’s why he can play with anybody.’
Ten part has won three Mo Awards and has toured with great success in America (Chicago Festival and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC), China, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, India and Indonesia. Recently they have twice performed Miroslav Bukovsky’s work based on the Kenneth Slessor poem Five Bells (at the Opera House Studio and The Wangaratta Festival of Jazz), with highly respected actor Tony Barry reading the poem against a free, rhythmic, textural section. I doubt that the poem will ever get a better reading than Barry’s.
There are four Ten Part CDs: Ten Part Invention (ABC), Tall Stories (Rufus Records), Unidentified Spaces (Rufus) and Live At Wangaratta (ABC). If you are interested in Australian music you should have all of them, but if I had to recommend one it would be Unidentified Spaces. This has Sandy Evans’s remarkable suite of the same name, and Miroslav Bukovsky’s masterpiece, Folk Song. Between them these give the most immediate indication of the diversity of the band’s music.
The first section of Unidentified begins with a rocking, dervishing Latin feel that changes time, revolving, almost in a kind of round; shouting, like a pagan rite, with a series of dual trumpet blasts moving through stinging dissonant positions. McGann does not solo at length but skirls wildly in short releases over it all. Sandy solos in free time and then in a rocky metre, and then the revolving, shouting rumpus is reprised. This section, called Fortea Two, is often played on its own in concert, and it lifts the roof.
The beautiful second part, The Heart, is like a brass chorale (`As near to a baroque ensemble as we will ever play,’ Alder told me), but the main theme is very modern and very Sandy. The baroque-like arrangement rises to shining high trumpet parts (with Miroslav and Warwick swapping the lead). The next section North Pole is so colouristic that its musical architecture might be overlooked at first hearing. Often limpid, nearly still, it is disturbed by powerful orchestral surges. It features some of McGann’s most beautiful melodic playing (actually surpassed on Bukovsky’s piece), a marvelous talking plunger mute solo by Greening and crystal clear piano from McNamara.
The final section, Queensland, is like mad Dixieland with some country and western in the mix. Renowned arranger Julian Lee raved about this when he heard it played at the Sydney Domain.
Bukovsky’s Folk Song is derived from a lovely and plangent Eastern European folk tune. McGann introduces the theme, which is harmonised all around him before the ensemble comes together in a curtain of sound in which the overtones oscillate eerily. The solos by Elphick, McGann and McNamara begin as free unacompanied cadenzas before the rhythm section kicks in beneath them. McGann’s solo – the emotional, singing slow part and the intense but buoyant swing (with Elphick’s magnificent bass and Pochee’s superb drums) is one of his greatest. In fact the playing by the three is classic.
Collective free improvisation and great transparent billows of sound follow. This is a very powerful, unified piece, in which the arching ensembles are counterposed against spare, dramatic commentary from piano, bass and drums. There is something Mingus-like in this.
And that’s not all. The first track, Bob Bertles’s Blues For Clancy moves at a fair clip and includes passages of the kind of high speed precision scrambling that shows the bebop roots still strong in the band (Bukovsky’s Ten Part Invention Blues from the first album has some similarities, but is extended into passages of crazy free form rumpus on the edge of chaos). Bob’s baritone solo is unstoppable and Alder and Bukovsky (actually on flugelhorn) blaze in a good old-fashioned trumpet battle of high brilliance and excitement. The inimitable and under-rated Ken James plays the fleet final solo on tenor.
The disc closes with a piece from outside the band by Col Loughnan called The Strongest Man In Indonesia (and of course there is a story behind it involving Pochee). This begins with wooden flute and cymbals.
Of course the 1999 Wangaratta recording is given over to the music of Roger Frampton in all its diversity. Frampton plays both piano and sopranino for the last time and the music transcends the occasional glitches in the recording.
I happen to love larger ensembles that combine writing and improvisation. There are great ones in Europe, and we have a couple here, including the Art Orchestra. Ten Part Invention stands, with its own personality and commitment, beside anything for me. As Sandy Evans told me, `I recently went with members of the Art Orchestra to play with some incredible musicians in India. Seeing the way musical accomplishment is treasured in that culture made me think that in Ten Part Invention there are senior players in Australian jazz who should be honoured.’