Peter Rechniewski and I heard pianist Jex Saarelaht decades ago on a trip to Melbourne during the making of the film Beyond El Rocco, for which I wrote the narration (or perhaps it was while I was writing Bodgie Dada; there is some connection with a project). We also took in Paul Grabowsky’s brilliant band with Ian Chaplin, the late Gary Costello, Allan Browne and vocalist Shelley Scown. Jex led his Jextet at another place. Both pianists are now firmly fixed in the pantheon, but Grabowsky has become widely known while Jex, to us in Sydney at any rate, seems a more obscure figure. That Jex is a very original and brilliant pianist was confirmed when he led a piano trio at Sydney’s Sound Lounge some few years back. Chris Abrahams was in attendance, and it was the first time in many years I had seen him at a jazz venue. Chris Abrahams is not going to turn up for a less than exceptional pianist. Jex will be at the Sound Lounge again on Saturday, February 13, to launch his new quartet album Fiveways on the Jazz Head label.
Possibly because of Grabowsky’s connection with Steve Vizard and the Vizard show, Melbourne comedians and actors would go to a couple of the jazz clubs in those days of our exceedingly pleasant trip. Grabowsky himself was witty, and so was Jex. As one of his saxophone players strapped on a baritone, Jex pointed to him and said (sorry can’t remember who it was) Joe Blow will be bailing out during this piece. It was all very relaxed and hip, in the best sense. Not hilarious, just relaxed and quietly funny. Strangely, an older Jex told the Sound Lounge audience that he was hopeless talking to an audience. Yet he was still quietly funny.
The piano is a wonderful instrument for creating different levels of texture, rhythmic and melodic movement simultaneously, because, obviously enough, one hand rests naturally in the lower treble and other in the upper lower, if you follow me. Jex is one of the great exponents. He implies levels between those actually played. As with Monk, Andrew Hill, Elmo Hope and others, you seem to be receiving thought as music, thought as audible form, and levels of thought in the implied but unheard. Jex’s touch is wonderful. On the new album there are some echoes of Debussy and Ravel. There is something both antic and supremely civilized in this music.
The players of *Fiveways *are all masters of touch and tone: Julien Wilson, tenor saxophone, Niko Schauble, drums, and one of Sydney’s great bassists, Jonathan Zwartz. I love these players and they are perfect in the context of Jex’s compositions. Some of these are sensual, dreamy and atmospheric, with the stern underlying compositional forms emerging only after a brief piano meditation and then a surge, like a boat being pushed into the water, of gentle rhythmic jostling and seemingly free interplay. The rising and falling shape that repeats toward the end of the first piece seems to keep spilling over onto itself like water passing through several locks, thanks to Schuable’s delicate percussive stream of ripples, water dimples, twigs and floating leaves.. On the second track Julien Wilson produces some uncanny yet very subtle vocalised tones. the beauty of these meditations is somehow intimated and vast. One piece swings, another rocks, in angular yet melodic ways with both forceful and subtle modal shapes and shifts.
All the instruments are recorded superbly, as if in a studio, though the performance is live.
Come and hear this. You’ll find it entrancing, and hip in the best sense.
Niko Schauble is the player you are least likely to have heard live. You are in for a very pleasing surprise.