This is stuff I’ve received far too late to say anything meaningful, but you should know that lovely trumpet player Eugene Ball will be playing the trumpet rolle in the late Donald Banks’s Nexus with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Malthouse on Saturday, May 1. This is part of a longer program and Euge is not sure when Nexus will be on. While James Morrison, the man who is prepared to say anything, maintains for obscure reasons that Lalo Schifrin was the first composer to create a meaningful synthesis of jazz and classical music, you should listen to this surprising work by Melbourne’s own Banks, in which I heard the late Keith Stirling play the trumpet and Don Burrows the saxophones, Allan Turnbull drums, etc at Sydney Town Hall many years ago. With the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. You might also listen to Jazz Abstractions by Gunther Schuller amongst several other things, including Shine by Oliver lake, after which you might wonder where the old James’s head is at.
Eugene will also be playing with the Andrea Keller Quartet to open for Charles Lloyd on May 4 as part of the Melbourne Jazz Festival. Also the Australian Art Orchestra on May 5, also for Melb Jazz Fez, will present a Miles Davis tribute The Prince Of Darkness, which will feature amongst much else Eugene’s re-orchestration of the first movement of Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo, which re-orchestrated and extended by Gil Evans, was the memorable opening track for the masterpiece Miles Davis album Sketches Of Spain.
At the moment I am writing a lecture to be be delivered at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as an adjunct to the exhibition Toward Abstraction, curated by Terence Maloon. I will try to be in Melbourne for the launch of the 4th edition of Extempore and will definitely be there in September when my book will be launched at the Melbourne Writers Festival. The next project for me here on SIMA will be a series of profiles of young musicians. The first two will be trumpeter Simon Ferenci and bassist Mike Majkowski, chosen not for merit you understand but strictly in alphabetical order. Which means of course that there is no one of interest between A and F inclusive, nor between F and M. Could this be right? Perhaps I am confused. I will try to explain that away on Lateline or the 7.30 Report . Natch. I may debate the issue with Tony Abbott.