Phillip Johnston's Page of Madness Band

an engaging and absorbing piece of chamber jazz composition/improvisation by a highly skilled band – AllAboutJazz (USA)

Join Australian-based New York saxophonist, composer and bandleader Phillip Johnston for the debut of this band for SIMA.

In July 1998, Phillip Johnston’s commissioned original score for Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1926 Japanese silent film classic, Page of Madness, was premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center by The Transparent Quartet, a group with which he had recorded several CDs in the 1990s. That first series of concerts was recorded, and now, 10 years later, has just been released as the first CD on Johnston’s own Asynchronous Records.

Last year, the score, with the film, had its antipodean premiere at the 2008 Sydney Film Festival, with an Australian version of that band, which included the same line-up playing tonight, and was enthusiastically received by an audience of over 800.

To celebrate the Australian release of the original recording of Page of Madness, and as an excuse to get this excellent band back together, the quartet that played at the Film Festival will perform selected music from the CD, and other music, in the intimacy of the Sound Lounge.