The Coolerators

Called “the H.G. Wells of the jazz world” by the Rolling Stone, Phillip Johnston brings his funky bi-tonal organ combo to The Sound Lounge.

Among his recent performances are a live rendition of his score for Teinosuke Kinusgasa’s 1927 Japanese silent film masterpiece, Page of Madness with Lloyd Swanton, Chris Abrahams and Daryl Pratt at the 2008 Sydney Film Festival, and duos/trios with fellow New Yorker Ned Rothenberg (and Chris Abrahams) at the Sound Lounge in July. About the latter, John Shand wrote, “Johnston played a zany cartoon-like solo, then produced beautifully measured lines on his own Needless Kiss.” (SMH).

On October 4/5, he performs his score for F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926), at the Melbourne’s Australian Museum of the Moving Image, in conjunction with the Melbourne Festival of the Arts, with John Napier (cello), Elizabeth Jones (piano-accordion) & Lauren Easton (voice).

On the heels of the first new release of new music since 1988 by his New York group The Microscopic Septet (Lobster Leaps In, on Cuneiform Records), Phillip brings a special edition of The Coolerators to the Sound Lounge, featuring Sam Golding on tuba and special guest Phil Slater on trumpet, as well as Coolerators regulars Toby Hall and Alister Spence.

Expect new tunes, new arrangements of classics, and new mistakes as “the party band for intellectuals” grooves and behooves.