Sitting in the deep and magical Merriwa Park, hearing bell tones of birds and snipping, sniping sounds that could be birds or insects, I wait happily to hear Dave Holland, and of course I think of Conference Of The Birds and other wonders. Ah, Wangaratta, expansion of the spirit! Blue gums, dappled and streaked with bark, tower above me and two boys play tennis into the gathering dusk on the courts through there. Pock. Pock. Pock. Pock. Music sounds better here, but that is often because it is great.
Yet even with a band of unquestionable high excellence, such as Holland’s, opinion will still be divided on aesthetic grounds. Some, including the great majority of citizens, were overwhelmed. The response to both Holland sets was amongst the most resounding I have heard in the Town Hall. People who could hardly have known about him hailed Holland as they would have a triumphant general returning to Rome. It was musicians who were divided. Some were in awe. Some were in awe but said it was technical music.
It is not my favourite period of Dave Holland. That ended with the great bands featuring Kenny Wheeler and Steve Coleman, from which trombonist Robin Eubanks has remained to the present. Sometimes they sounded as if they had run through a piece only once before recording. There was a looseness and an edge. One has to put all that aside and listen to the hear and now. The current band plays often together and has done for some time. Too slick? Not for me. The first piece had certain Eastern overtones, as of old, together with the familiar European folk echoes – a feeling of harvest, of the barley mow. It was fast, skirling, but tight. The ensemble sound of Chris Potter’s bright tenor and Eubanks’s trombone had a lemony bite and a hint of languor. That is the Dave Holland sound. It gave me a thrill of recognition. Steve Nelson’s vibraphone, so relaxed and adroit, opened it all laterally with an ultra-modern but almost tropical feeling. Potter’s first solo rode the rhythm as if it were a series of pressure waves, scaling with complex angularity to find passionate releases at the crest.
In praising new drummer Nate Smith, no one except Simon Barker mentioned how funky he sounded whatever he played in whatever metre. Highly talented trombonist John Hibbard was not alone in criticizing Eubanks (while admitting that he had a superb sound). He did not like the way Eubanks filled every available space in his contrapuntal passages with Potter. This did not occur to me. I was too gobsmacked by the way these bustling, bursting passages resolved on the instant in smooth gliding legato unisons. It is true that Eubanks often peppered the air with neat notes, deftly tongued, but these patterns (like Dizzy Gillespie’s) created a musk of atmosphere about them for me. I loved also the long transparent billowing high notes, rather like a French horn’s, that even put me in mind of Ellington’s Lawrence Brown. Many were thrilled to hear Holland’s bass and to see him, smiling gladly at the felicities of his players. Me too.
The German Nils Wogram was certainly a very different trombonist, legato, limber, perhaps even faster. Wogram’s Route 70 was a revelation. Their lines were so light, but intense and swinging. I mean really swinging in no old fashioned way. At times they played in microtones.
They even played fast microtonal unisons. New Zealand alto saxophonist Hayden Chisholm played often with a soft, round, glowing tone drawing somewhat from cool West and East Coast jazz sources such as Paul Desmond and Lee Konitz, with amazing fluency and invention, increasing intensity not with volume but with a sudden mounting flurry of asymmetrical notes which unravelled in liquid descending triplets. Late in the set he played harder with perhaps a hint of Anthony Braxton. One of this band’s pieces, Time Flies gave me a lovely vertigo as fast complex lines led repeatedly to dying falls through sustained fourths with the momentum restored each time. It was like riding fast to hillcrests and gliding vertiginously down: a beautiful play of musical topography and speed.
The first Australian band to absolutely kill me was Allan Browne’s with their beautiful suite The Drunken Boat, inspired by French poet Arthur Rimbaud. A big disappointment was the no show by Sylvester Stallone. I was looking forward to hearing him read from Rambo….Oh, I see. Silly moi. Quelle dill! The music was written by trumpeter Eugene Ball and guitarist Geoff Hughes. Certainly it drew largely from 1950s jazz, but it exploited the expressive qualities of that era in a way that should have sent most back for an exploratory tour. One section even looked fair to sounding like Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Man With The Golden Arm, and I was also reminded of the Homecoming theme from the same movie, played so beautifully by trumpeter Pete Candoli.
Speaking of beautiful trumpet, Eugene Ball, after initial early morning pitch fragilities, settled in to give us beautiful ensemble work and a series of solos in which the stately, conversational and quirky elements of his playing came together as well as I have heard. Big-bellied stuttering notes issued, stinging squeezed-valve meanness and shining upward flares like a fountain rising in the sun. The cool pellucid ensembles were sometimes played by cup-muted trumpet and alto, sometimes open trumpet and alto, while Geoff Hughes released guitar notes with delayed attack that floated in the air behind the horns. Those unisons angled, swept and flowed with sense of intent progression. Sometimes Hughes also produced gritty, groaning organ rafts of electric sound that were like a second ensemble playing: a double quintet.
Young alto saxophonist Phil Noy was exceptional, truly exceptional. Bassist Nick Haywood was given or perhaps invented one of the best bass ostinato figures I have ever heard. The elegance and sympathy of Browne’s drumming goes without saying, but I’ve said it again.
Finally Browne’s daughter Stella crept out, looking painfully shy, and sang some Rimbaud in the French with a charm of phrasing and sound that was devastating. Okay, it was Allan’s daughter. Put it down to whatever you like, my face was wet.
I don’t suppose there has been a year in which I have passed up so many excellent things – because I had heard them before and would hear them again – in order to hear new things of interest. Now I am doing a double take on that rationale, but it is done. I can simply give second-hand report that Mike Nock’s trio was superb. Sydney’s Showa was the talk of the town among Melbourne musicians. I wrote briefly about them in the Jazz:Now Festival review on this site. Also the Julien Wilson Trio, Twentieth Century Dog, Don Rader, Judy Bailey, etc. What a wealth of the unheard. By me.
I heard Steve Magnusson playing beautifully in the Anglican Cathedral with his trio, and Julien Wilson playing sublime tenor with Murphy’s Law and with guitarist Nashua Lee’s band. I was disappointed that Nash did not play his one hit The Monster Nash (it’s a graveyard smash!) but his playing gripped me in Murphy’s Law, in his guitar competition heat, and in his own band, where in one racing passage he tightened his lyrical sound, made the chord more dissonant and distorted, until he seemed to meet resistance in the air. Or as if he had bottomed out on a big wave before cutting back and taking off again. I heard some of the powerhouse Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra playing the music of Mike Nock, and was fortunate to catch a brilliant feature for trumpeter Phil Slater. Later Eugene Ball said, ‘How good does Phil Slater want to get? Phew!’
Pianist Jex Saarelaht, Allan Browne and glorious trombonist Shannon Barnett were a delight in the Playhouse, as were Gerard Master’s trio with the wonderful bassist Brendan Clarke filling in for Cameron Undy. I heard some of Barney McAll’s great band in St Patrick’s Hall, but the bottom end was so massively amplified it activated the eigentones in the lively room, drowning out everything but the gargantuan piano and bass. Visiting guest guitarist Jerry Seinfeld (I notice Kramer is no longer in his band)...no, hang on, it was Kurt Rosenwinkel, played with such light grace it astounded me that he actually floated through.
The last thing I heard was one of the inspirations of the festival. This was Gest8, a band created by Sandy Evans AND Tony Gorman – a detail overlooked everywhere. Gorman wrote at least half the music, including the longest piece, but did not play. Tony bears MS bravely and only plays clarinet these days in haunting solos or in duet with tabla player Bobby Singh. He made a brief, comic and moving appearance on stage to explain the idea behind his piece Whistling At Dinner.
Musically, this was preceded by a duet in which laptop maestro Greg White absorbed elements of Phil Slater’s trumpet playing and returned them to him evocatively distorted, while injecting elements of his own. This music simply shone, making consistently engaging use of its many colours: Slater, White, Sandy’s tenor and soprano saxophones, Paul Cutlan’s tenor sax and bass and Eb clarinets, Simon Barker’s drums, Steve Elphick’s magnificent bass, and most strikingly, the solos and interactions of Satsuki Odamura’s koto and bass Koto and Carl Dewhurst’s extraordinary electric guitar (in what style or idiom can he not play with authority?)
Of course shades of Clarion Fracture Zone were in the air, particularly in Gorman’s The Emperor’s Old Clothes with its trad jazz/circus march/Balkan folk feeling. This was bumped from beneath by a bass figure, which remained the same but suddenly gave a funky feel (not unlike The Sidewinder) when the music changed above it.
Sandy’s A Shower Of Sunbeams was dazzling, dancing and cryingly
poignant all at the same time. Perhaps the most thrilling moments in the whole festival came on The Emperor’s, when Sandy swooped up at the end of a glittering soprano solo, sending Slater into the stratosphere and all over the night sky in a solo that skittered and screamed, dropped to deep stentorian tones, flew again in zigzag lightnings and jagged manoeuvres like a plane dodging through ack ack. How good, indeed? It was like Harry James standing up in the Goodman band, like … well, like any time you have heard a trumpet really take off in pure exultation.
Just before writing this I saw Missy Higgins on television and immediately recognised Phil’s sound issuing from the shadows behind her. Gerard Master’s was also in that band. Higgins sounded good.
Oh, the Alcohotlicks beat the St Pat’s acoustics (no bass!) and their two guitarists, Aaron Flower and Ben Hauptmann came first and second respectively in the guitar comp. Hugh Stuckey from Adelaide was third. As a bonus for the locals it rained. I enjoyed it too and was still able to sneak a walk through the wet bush beyond Merriwa Park.
A very happy Johnny Boy boarded the train for Sydney, with one strand of poignancy hanging at the windows. The beloved Town Hall and playhouse are going to be replaced by a larger entertainment complex. This sadness is a result of Wangaratta’s great and deserved success. Much like the Melbourne Cup interest rate rise of course.