Fourth Annual Jazz:Now Festival
The Studio, Sydney Opera House
September 19-22
Presented by Jazzgroove Association and SIMA
Speaking of his time as an arranger with the Claude Thornhill orchestra, Gil Evans said that on slow ballads the band’s sound could hang in the air like a cloud. This effect was exploited in contrasting contemporary modes by the ensemble that opened this year’s Jazz Now and by the band that closed the third and penultimate night.
Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, John Shand described the effect of Divine Dialects, the first of these, as “a constant shimmer…amid which trumpet, saxophone, vibraphone, piano, bass and drums suddenly seem to catch the light and briefly flare”. Also that “textural templates seemed to exist for different sections”. I wish I’d written that first. Something vaguely like it was on my mind. And I’m sure Shand would have liked some more space in which to expand. For if it shimmered, as it surely did, it also drifted in a curious way: an uncalibrated drift which could gain apparent momentum with increases of volume, and reach near-stasis with a beautifully modulated change of dynamics .
Yet it always moved, as if we were watching a landscape passing, which was always there and always changing. It could have been a natural landscape, a bright haze of insects and dust motes, or we could have seen some secret industrial plant passing in which lights went on and off in inscrutable sequences. It began with a rippling ostinato in waves of increasing and declining volume from Hugh Barrett’s piano, which was joined by a counter pattern from Peter Farrar’s alto saxophone. Thenceforth the prismatic shimmer embraced random ticks and tocks, widely spaced thuds, and throbbing, shaking pulses as of a motorbike idling or a power boat heard underwater. The incandescent fragments were sometimes extended into brief phrases or held notes, including some exclamations and silvery belches from Nick Garbett’s trumpet (“The silver, snarling trumpets `gan to chide’”, wrote John Keats in his review in The Daily Telegraph) and these seemed to surface like bright logs in a flood tide.
You will excuse the watery reference, prompted by Garbett’s name, so like a compression of garfish and halibut. The point here is that, like Triosk, this band is playing with time and non-time. The illusion of calibrated time where none exists, and the illusion of suspended time where pulses can be counted.
Incidentally, how fantastic, how ultra-modern trumpet and vibraphone sound together, as demonstrated long ago by Shorty Rogers and Teddy Charles (Theodore Cohen) and Booker Little and Charles.
This was both a composition and an improvisation, which became clear when trumpet and saxophone played large, jagged figures in unison, then in disjunction, and broke into flying jazz fragments for a bare instant. If some listeners thought these characters could not play, they were surely disabused by bassist Mike Majkowski’s powerful Bartokian bowed tremelo.
We were left with something that looked like a black toy racing car, or sometimes a frog, leaping with a life of its own on the bars of Dale Gorfinkel’s vibraphone. This was part of an earphone, propelled upward by the electric fans that keep the lids of the resonators in motion, giving that familiar oscillation. Its random yet rivetting break-beats just stopped, and that was the end.
Two people had left. The rest applauded loudly. It was mysterious and magical, and justified the festival at one stroke.
The night’s other band, The Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra, could easily have sounded old fashioned by contrast. A big band! “Think Ellington and Basie with a nouveau Australian twist,” said the program. Ellington and Basie are certainly timeless, but in the event the band sometimes reminded me more of Stan Kenton. It was an exhilarating blast – some trumpet section! – and what was perhaps most impressive about it was the way infectious grooves were maintained through all the high speed tumbling and scurrying of the sections.
Two arrangements by Evan Lohning made a nice contrast. Like Gerry Mulligan, who coincidentally had an association with Claude Thornhill and Gil Evans, Lohning has the knack of finding freshness in traditional elements, and of writing leanly and inventively. He has retained his belief in big bands, even though some of us foolishly called them dinosaurs in one period long ago. Among many fine solos, Richard Maegraith’s tenor saxophone feature stood out. Leader Dave Theak’s alto and soprano playing reminded me of a contemporary version of Basie’s Marshall Royal: brilliantly articulated, slithering, zipping and slashing with a searing edge.
Evan Mannell has become – among several other things – a wonderful big band drummer in the dramatic, driving and explosive tradition of Sonny Paine and Gene Krupa. At one point he played a climactic Blakey press roll that launched the brass into the high heavens. Brendan Clarke has been for some time in the best company on acoustic and electric bass. The exceptional Hugh Barrett was on piano once more. A word in praise of Murray Jackson, who has found his voice these days.
Night two began with the unlikely confluence of four double basses: Cameron Undy, Lloyd Swanton, Abel Cross and Steve Elphick; calling themselves Low Fidelity. These are among the most admired in the country, with an outstanding newcomer. What a source of inspiration for emerging generations, each one of them so different.
On one piece they bowed together and found an eerie whine of close intervals, with one bass or another dropping or rising at whiles to suggest other harmonic possibilities. At other times they bowed and plucked busily, inserted implements between the strings, knocked on wood, and generally moved into chattering, buzzing areas unforeseen by the inventor of the instrument (Profumo Profundo most likely), finding music there of humour, mystery and intrigue. Cameron Undy’s sudden leaps might have been heard as showing off, except that his body language made clear his humorous and mischievous intent. Here are the maestros who scorn technique for technique’s sake. But, hey, it’s also fun to flaunt it.
This recital of night music ended with the four plucking a fast, swinging Ornette Coleman tune in unison. They probably well knew that this improbable treatment was unlikely to be anything but silly. The improbable happened. It was funny, but also exhilarating.
The much noisier Carl Dewhurst/Simon Barker duet followed. Barker had added various tuned percussions, some very metallic, to his drum kit, and Dewhurst had his full range of effects at his feet. If Divine Dialects was a sustained shimmer, this was a sustained roaring din of almost frightening momentum but full of mysterious clanging, belling resonances and textures. With all its fierce, often rock-influenced energy it was also quite beautiful.
Leading to the perfect contrast of the Kristin Berardi Band.
Having written about Berardi, an enchanting singer, in my review here of her victory in the Freedman Fellowship finals a couple of months ago in this very studio, it is hard to go over that ground so soon after her triumph. In the review I was critical of her own songs, and now regret it. Hearing them filled out by the superb band she led at Jazz:Now, the songs’ structures impressed me more strongly. Lame patches in the lyrics (easily revisited) passed by harmlessly in the glorious music-making, and the lyric talent I had missed easily overrode them. Berardi’s improvising pushed the band as surely as did any of the glittering array of soloists: Mike Nock, David Theak, James Muller. Nock was in great form, but one of his piano solos was an absolute Nockian classic. He has so much drive and melodic invention at his fingertips, so much dissonant intensity that can be brought into play; and he reaches for his best in every performance.
Bassist Mike Majkowski and drummer Tim Firth were as impressive here as they have been in less traditional and ballad-oriented contexts. Like the Mothership Orchestra, this singer-led band showed that tradition can still pack a punch amid more determinedly now-oriented performances. For all that, the moment of sublimity – when time stood still, to return to a theme – was reached in Berardi’s slower than slow rendition of Body And Soul, accompanied by Nock. For all this talk of time standing still, it is actually very hard to keep the time alive, specially when you are using time very freely, when time is moving as slowly as this. Sensual, affecting, supremely confident, this was world class singing.
The third night began with Phillip Johnston’s Snap, a saxophone quartet which presented compositions by Johnston and Sandy Evans. Some of the cascading harmonies made the four reeds sound like a giant piano accordion, or even a harmonium. Looming forward at the point of resolution was Nick Bowd’s baritone, like a pylon, like a dark rock. Beautiful playing, Nick. Full of early jazz quirkiness, impressionism and modernity, this was charming without quite catching fire on the night, despite some spirited efforts by Sandy and Andrew Robson.
Nor did Trio Apoplectic tap the intensity that can rise from their essentially graceful concept. Still, they gave us a set full of beauty, with Dave Jackson’s alto lines often seeming to catch a slanting gold light. John “Shakespeare’s” McBeath, reviewing the superb Trio Apoplectic CD in The Australian, likened Jackson’s limpid tone to Paul Desmond’s. Played side by side, there is signifigant difference, but the comparison has something to it. Jackson’s lines too have a glancing affinity with Desmond’s when he transposes a running figure through different registers until a new idea flowers. It is somewhat baroque, even Bach-like. Terse, angular figures rare in Desmond, occur with Jackson.
Perhaps the trio played too many languid melodies in a row. Perhaps these would have found a more sensitised response if they had held the light, intense swing that is a characteristic, even a little beyond the point they thought they ought to have done. Or cut loose with some more rugged, spiky contrasts. The best have an off night.
Even as they moved to their instruments, the Phil Slater Quartet gave notice that something special was about to happen. Experience, focus and intent made the difference. I have written about this band several times and once more it is difficult to do so again so soon. You might like to turn to my review on this site of their performance at Wangaratta last year, or much better, get their CD The Thousands. The illusion of suspended time referred to at the beginning of this review was apparent as soon as trumpeter Slater, swaying hypnotically as if charming a snake, began playing the first of the lovely themes on which their continuous performance was based. We were in still, deep water, and we knew something large was rising.
It came with a rushing roar of drums and cymbals, intense pedal thrumming and sudden figures in an oblique register from the bass, a pangling glitter and rolling thunder from the piano. Sometimes Slater unravelled sleeves of shining high trumpet over this; sustained screams also, piercing stabs and falling arabesques; and sometimes he played long melodic lines against the rising clamour of excitement. Strange overtones rang in there.
Slater’s trumpet sound has taken on new dimensions throughout its wide dynamic range. It is so open throated and soft-edged when he plays a slow melody that it is a voice. Swanton, pianist Matt McMahon and Simon Barker are at the peak of our music making. This does not quite explain it. When they play together, something happens and we don’t know entirely what it is. It is of course very complete, developing like a classical music and encompassing the softest pianissimo and most devastating molto triple forte.
Tradition flowered again on the final night in the brilliant intricacy, pace and beauty of the Tom O’Halloran Trio. The leader/pianist/composer has devised complex arrangements that ran across the many pages spread before Evan Mannell’s drums. New material, new rhythmic routines kept coming. This did not stem the racing momentum. Nor did it dull the glowing lyricism of the tranquil interludes. Mannell and Undy negotiated the changes with elan. O’Halloran produced a glorious, ten-fingered piano sound, which rose in sparkling surges, raced like a greyhound and created pools of shining beauty.
On this occasion eclectic contemporaneity, as presented by Matthias Shriefl’s Shreefpunk, rarely achieved more than entertaining novelty by comparison. Trumpeter Shriefl and his band, who were presented in association with Germany Faces Australia and the Goethe Institute, closed the festival in crowd-pleasing fashion. And there is nothing wrong with that. Shriefl was immensely likeable and played fine, clear trumpet, open or muted. He has had some considerable success, and it is not hard to see why.
In John Shand’s words, “Broad wit infused the work of the trumpeter and his band, as oompah music, rather obese rock, 20s jazz, thrash, carnival music and pastiches of much else collided”. Some of that obese rock might have come from a rock opera, and if you want a really punky collision of jazz and punk, I would suggest Melbourne’s Bucket Rider, or a more exciting rock jazz, Sydney’s The Alcahotlicks.
Asked in the foyer what I had thought, I said it was interesting, funny, very good, but it didn’t kill me. A drummer whose name I may have mentioned above said it didn’t kill him either. We survive. But it was brilliantly played and I’m glad I heard it. It had its place at Jazz:Now. And Jazz:Now held its place as one of the most important events on the calendar.