I remember saxophonist Bob Bertles cooking his staple spaghetti dish up in the wonderful Kings Cross penthouse where he has lived for many years, while talking about trumpeter Booker Little on the Eric Dolphy Five Spot sessions. Bob said he loved Little’s sound: there were no holes in it, no air pockets. This came back to me years later while I was listening to young Sydney trumpeter Simon Ferenci. Simon can be a quite contained player. He often plays at soft or mid volume with a full, compact and very beautiful sound. There are no holes in it. It is the sound of a player who, as a student, must have made sure there were no holes, no scratchiness in any register, before he ever tried anything spectacular. It is also the sound of a very thoughtful player. I feel that, at 27, he is only just coming into maturity (which is not an unusual thing at all). One of his contemporaries said recently, “Simon’s sound is more beautiful each time I hear it”. Sitting beside me not long ago at the Sound lounge, Mike Nock turned and said of Simon: “This is the best I’ve heard him play.” I thought so too, but was not surprised by this flowering.
When Ferenci’s superb quartet (bassist Mike Majkowski, pianist Hugh Barrett and drummer James Waples) get busy, free and energised, creating a thicket of textures and polirhythms, you can find yourself urging Ferenci on. He holds that immaculate containment and calm against the complexity and fury – his notes sit in the same relationship to the beat; he does not rush or overblow – and patience is soon rewarded. You feel his momentum and force rising through the busier activity. Momentum and excitement, achieved through note placement, developmental patterns, surprise shifts of register and a steady rise in volume, until his sound is big and shining, clean and thrilling. He has a beautiful, clean high register, and under full sail he clearly loves to use it. Everything is now flying. Ferenci’s notes are deftly stacked in asymmetric patterns, giving the illusion of overlapping. How can this exciting confusion of the senses rise from such a calm basic style?
Aha. This is one of the notable satisfactions of recent Australian jazz. It is as different to Scott Tinkler and Phil Slater as they are to each other. Different to Warwick Alder, Miroslav Bukovsky, Paul Williamson, Eugene Ball, Eamon Dilworth, Damien Brunton, Peter Knight, Pat Thiel, and so on. They are all different. We have a cornucopia of trumpet at this time. Trumpets are a special interest for me. As John Sangster once said, “Even after you’ve given up or switched to another instrument you will still go to hear a new trumpeter.”
Before discussing this with Simon Ferenci, let us look at it all from a particular point of view. My interest in the trumpet began with Louis Armstrong, who still absolutely kills me. It is not the starting point for many of Ferenci’s generation. They have all listened to Clifford Brown, and that is a long time ago too. When I first heard Brown my impression was of brilliantly attacked chromatic runs and patterns, with lyrical irregularities. It seemed abstract at first. There was a curious satisfaction there, and I became obsessed. And then I suddenly heard it whole: the buoyant dancing figures, the sudden high blasts, the bursting joy. More than Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker, Howard McGhee – perhaps even more than Miles Davis – this was the major influence on the line of trumpeters who have led us to the present. Brilliant and distinctive as many of them were, it was Miles Davis, Don Cherry and Woody Shaw who were cited as the major extensions and departures from that line. But what about Booker Little? Would he have been recognized more universally if he had lived beyond 24? It seemed to me that Little was probably Simon Ferenci’s most significant point of departure en route to his own very recognizable concept. But was I barking up the wrong tree?
When I heard the Simon Ferenci Quartet some months ago at Bohemian Grove, Sketches Of Spain was playing as they set up. It seemed as if some of Miles’s passionate Spanish/Moorish inflections had entered Ferenci’s playing as he began a slow soulful composition of his own. But it was in many ways different to Miles. It hinted at the way Booker Little plays the slow soulful pieces on the great album Out Front. Tighter than Miles, wonderfully in tune, yet also passionate, using quarter tones you may not always hear at a first listening. So here was another clue, but it was different to Little also.
Ferenci is a quiet and self-effacing man. His humour is quiet. I am proud to say that he laughed out loud when he came to my place. At a funny story, I hasten to add. His name is pronounced with a soft ‘c’ : Ferensi. His father came from Hungary, his mother from Germany, but his friends call him Frenchy.
It is important to note that there is another side to Simon’s artistic expression, and this can be heard in his work with the free improvisers (the Splinter Orchestra and various other ensembles) who play in an area largely outside jazz, though some elements of free jazz can still be heard in what they do. You will find some discussion of what Ferenci does in this context in my Discontinuous Diary 4. The context is an ensemble playing at Sedition, the barber shop venue in Darlinghurst.
The man himself came over to my place and it was a little while before I introduced the small matter of influence.
After a stint back in the family homestead at Lane Cove, Simon is in the process of moving out again into the wilds of inner city Sydney. In primary school Simon had wanted to play the trombone, but his arms were too short. As I recall, this was also the case with Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus when they were boys. He was given a recorder but never liked it. Simon’s parents listened to classical music, but Simon took little notice of it. He listened to the radio and liked certain grunge bands, but found it hard during the interview to remember any of them. He did like Smashing Pumpkins, he recalled. “When I’ve gone back and listened to some of the bands I liked I’ve found them not very good.”
But Smashing Pumpkins are very musical, I suggested. The lead vocalist sings beautifully. Ferenci shrugged. “I haven’t heard their later stuff. They probably got much better.”
Ferenci did not turn against rock and pop, however. Recently he has played trombone (with Nicholas Garbett on trumpet) with Watussi (correct spelling: it’s a made up name not an African one), who have a strong South American influence. He has also toured with The Beautiful Girls, along with Matt Keegan, Hugh Barrett and others. So are the girls really so beautiful?
“Ah, there aren’t any girls in the band.”
I think I already knew that.
“All the rock bands I’ve played with I’ve enjoyed, and I’ve always learnt something. I’ll always be grateful to Watussi because they took me on a tour to Brazil.”
In high school (North Sydney Boys), Ferenci began playing the trumpet and soon joined a local big band with such school mates as pianist Jackson Harrison, vibraphonist Dale Gorfinkel, alto and soprano saxophonist Jeremy Rose.
“There were others at North Sydney Boys about my age who played jazz, and also others who went into composition and rock bands.”
This is clearly a very musical school. It all rang a bell, so I asked bassist Steve Elphick if I was right in thinking he had gone there. Indeed he had, in the same year as Mark Simmonds.
Simon’s first teacher was a classical trumpet player: “Of course I got to like the sound of baroque trumpet and so on, but although I am a much better trumpet player now, I could not play those things as well now as I could then. It’s very different. It’s not just physical. It’s a concept of sound, a way of thinking, and a degree of refinement.” The first international musician to impress Ferenci was trumpeter Lee Morgan. “Oh, I heard Blue Train with Coltrane, Moanin’ with the Jazz Messengers, The Gigolo, the 1958 Paris Olympic concert with the Messengers – ah, yes I’ve heard Search For The New Land. It’s beautiful. Lee Morgan was the first who really connected with me. This was from the perspective of someone who hadn’t heard very much. It was more than just notes. It just really grabbed me. I really liked that percussive attack you mentioned. There is no one else whose articulation is like his.”
Lee Morgan! This was a surprise. And yet. Sound is a huge factor with Lee Morgan. Morgan’s is one of the most remarkable trumpet sounds: powerful, shining, yet not exactly brassy. Full throated. Bursting. Sometimes grainless as white neon.
“I still love his playing but I don’t really want to play like that. Freddie Hubbard was the next guy I listened to, then Woody Shaw. Then I heard Booker Little and later I listened to Miles, particularly the second quintet. Booker Little was an amazing trumpet player technically, but he wasn’t confined by that. Some of the exceptional technical players are reluctant to push themselves past technical excellence. Booker Little had great musical freedom, yet he was very connected to the music – and a strong emotional thing comes out too. Of all the trumpeters influenced by Clifford Brown, he was maybe two steps past them all. He was not restricted to functional harmony, to two/fives. This is evident more in his playing with Eric Dolphy, and on his album Out Front, and of course Eric Dolphy is on that too. I love that album. There are different sections in the music, time changes. Not just head/solo/ head. Yet it’s still a very jazz way of playing and arranging. We shouldn’t forget what a great arranger he was.”
I offered the view that if he had lived he would have been the next Gil Evans.
“Definitely. Each piece has a complete shape, its own sound world.”
I was happy to be able to play a track with Little that Ferenci had not heard: Little’s composition and arrangement Cliff Walk from Mingus’s Newport Rebels.
So what attracted Ferenci to the free improvisers who see themselves as something outside jazz?
“It was where my listening led me. Jazz can mean many things, and a lot of things have come from it. It’s not the only thing i want to do.”
“For your generation of players,” I suggested, “the word jazz is just a convenient but very general indication of idiom.”
“Yes. There were players in my era – Rory Brown, Peter Farrer, Dale Gorfinkel, Alon Ilsa…In the first year at Con (Conservatorium of NSW) we used to get together and play Ornette Coleman tunes and get very free on them. We used to play at a venue in Sydney University called Pitch [there’s a connection here, to which we’ll return]. And I got to play with Clayton Thomas, Mike Majkowski, Jon Rose and others. I listened to free jazz and still do – I love to hear the older players in that idiom, both European and American – Kris Wanders when he plays in Sydney: the loudest tenor saxophonist I’ve ever heard! – but I don’t think free jazz can contribute to the further development of improvisation now…Having said that, there are some guys in Brisbane who are doing that in their own way: Scott McConnachie…he’s a beautiful player…Elliot Dalgliesh, Ken Edie – he’s amazing, ….Yes, I heard trumpeter Leo Smith when Peter Farrer brought him out here, and I heard him in New York with Jack Dejohnette, Malachi Favors. I was with Dale Gorfinkel and we got there a bit early. I was jet-lagged and I fell asleep. As soon as they started playing I woke up. Actually I was never so awake in my whole life. it was one of the best things I’ve ever heard.
I went to new York twice for a month to see what was going on. There is a lot of stuff in New York that you don’t get to hear in Australia. I heard a band with Eric Reedus, Tain Watts, Duncan Eubanks, at The Fat Cat, where they had a regular Monday night. They were all in Branford’s band, which mainly played big places, but this was really close. I was about two metres from Tain Watts and he revealed himself as an incredible musician. It was great to hear them in a little place, where they were relaxed, just doing their thing. That’s what I like best of all.
My quartet (with Hugh Barrett, Mike Majkowski and James Waples) started six or seven years ago. We did some Kurt Rosenwinkel tunes, some Tony Malaby things, and then I started writing some things. We can be totally free, and there’s a lot of stuff where there’s melody and from there we can go anywhere.”
Look out for Simon Ferenci, and all the other young players I have mentioned here on the programs of such places as Bohemian Grove, 505, the Sound Lounge. Profiles of Mike Majkowski, Peter Farrer, Dave Jackson, the noble Finbar, the distinguished Abel Cross and others will follow at intervals. At first I will profile Sydney players. Because I live here and it’s not so easy to do face-to-face interviews with those in other states. But I’ll work it out.
To return to Pitch (which you’ve no doubt forgotten about) which ran in a hall in the Manning building at Sydney Uni and also in a wood walled smaller place there. My son played in both rooms with his band the Freedivers and also with the Matthew Clare Trio, which included drummer Alon Ilsa, mentioned above by Simon Ferenci. About half an hour ago I listened to a few tracks of a recording I have by the trio at Pitch and it was so good it actually hurt me. Partly because Matthew stopped playing. He now runs a little coffee and food place with his Thai wife (who is apparently a magic cook) in Brisbane. Something broke his spirit where music was concerned. It has never broken mine, though I’ve often thought the gods were playing with me, but that is possibly because I have nothing like his talent. Recently he did say that he wished he had continued his association Alon for longer.