Bass and beyond

Pippa Macmillan was coming to play with John and Marie in Apeiron Baroque and I was in.  Pippa is now in Australia but is quite and international, with degrees for the Royal Academy of Music and Juilliard and appointed Professor of baroque double bass at the RSM, that school next to that other Albert Hall, and performing with Tapfelmusik, Florilegium, Austn Brandenburg Orch, Austn Haydn Ens and the rest.  She was playing violone with the gut strings and those gut frets and a big Dragonetti period bow.  But how lithe and quick and unrelenting in her drive.  No slowing down with this rhythm section!  Otherwise, this was a joy of baroque historical overview with a program called Something old, something new.  Thirteen composers, mostly C15th, some C16th and just two contemporaries.  Ariosti and Albinoni and a string of lesser known names, seldom encountered.  All held together with backgrounds and stories from the ever-engaging John Ma, himself of considerable European history, and Marie Searles on harpsichord, again of Euro-connections.  The group would move through tunes, with Matt Greco, again a Euro-aligned and Aussie-busy concertmaster and soprano Susannah Lawergren up front for a series of tunes, not least a fabulous modern work but Michael Bakrncev who was in the audience, and if I remember right, was listening to the world premiere of this composition, a touching song of a mother laying in bed with her new child while her partner rings updates downstairs.  The text was by Cate Kennedy and the work was called Thank You.  Just glorious music.  Otherwise, the modern works were Allemande from the Jorn Borsen Harpsichord sonata and Spring from Dominick Argento Elizabethan songs.  And several Canberra advanced students invited by John and Marie, Brad Tham, Alex Monro and Dante Costa, all well known in local circles.  Just wonderful playing with that stellar bottom end, a varied and intriguing program from the ages and some delightful, welcoming patter.  Another great outing.

Apeiron Baroque performed at Wesley Church.  AB was led by John Ma (violin, MD) and Marie Searles (harpsichord, MD) with Susannah Lawergren (soprano), Matt Greco (violin), Pippa Macmillan (violone), Michael Bakrncev (composer), Dante Costa (flute), Brad Tham (violin) and Alex Munro (viola).

Our annual songs meet

I love my jazz and other gigs but my longed-for favourite each year has to be NCO with CCS.  That's a full orchestra and choir at Llewellyn; 120 or more on stage and some fabulous music.  I've played a string of these including Beethoven, Carl Off, Monty Python (?!), Haydn, Brahms... Playing in such orchestral strength with a capable massed SATB choir is a huge thrill.  This year was perhaps more modern, story-telling, filmic with 2 modern pieces.  First up was the occasionally jovial recounting of the experience of migration to Australia and the surprises and loves of process and outcome created by 2 immigrants, composer Elena Kats-Chernin and librettist Tamara-Anna Cislowska, telling stories from Chinese migration at the time of the gold rush, post-WW2 migrants, Vietnam refugees and more.  The lyrics were lengthy and not always so easy to catch but suffice to recognise an ode to Vegemite and an immigrant's surprise at topless bathing at Bondi.  How Aussie!  The bass could be repetitive, other than for one fiendishly tricky quick movement, so perhaps the voices defined the pleasures, but I languished in the pleasure and good humour of it all.  Then an interval and surprisingly similar approach (repetitive accompaniment, filmic accompaniment, more complex lyrics with inviting melodies) from a one-time member of Soft Machine and now composer of a British Classic FM Hall of Fame no.2 hit.  This was the Kosovo-inspired mass for piece, The Armed Man by Karl Jenkins.   Again inspiring if mostly for the voices, but quite touching and apt for out times.  Suffice to say, this was again a deeply thrilling outing and another for the diary.  And as for the post-concert party and Martin's dip, well, that's another story of joy.

National Capital Orchestra and Canberra Choral Society under Louis Sharpe (conductor, NCO MD) and Dan Walker (CCS MD) performed Human Waves and The Armed Man at Llewellyn with soloists Jillian Halleron (soprano) and Liam Meany (cello) and Bilal Berjaoui (vocals) performing the Call to prayers.  The bottom enders were Henry South, Juliet Flook, Mel Fung, Jeremy Tsuei and Eric Pozza (basses).

The allure of standards

Apparently Geoff had suggested a standards trio and I was not alone in thanking him for it.  Jazzers can become a bit blasé about our American songbook but when it's played with this delicacy and beauty and awareness of the great players that precede us this can be a thing of great beauty, immense subtlety and respect for history.  Thus it was with Hannah James and her return to Canberra with her standards piano trio with Adrian Keevil and Paul Derricott.  Just beautiful melodies played with respect, an array of great solos and a few traded fours.  Oscar Peterson, Mulgrew Miller, Horace Silver, Ray Brown, Tommy Flanagan: what's not to like and to swing to.  And some tunes that can be cheesy but just sat so nicely of the likes of Tea for two or Love for sale or Mean to me or some lesser knowns like NY attitude or It never entered my mind or something a bit funky with Mulgrew Miller Soul-Leo and that lovely transition that I think her offsiders didn't even expect, when Hannah sat on a repeated G on the 4/4 beat of Here's that rainy day that subtly mutated to the 3/4 of Moon river, a heartache favourite of mine, continuing to a solo and melody almost obliviously.  The room was swooning and the playing was delicious and Hannah's solos were understated and instructive.  Just lovely and I'm hanging out to revisit it in the mix.  Thanks, Hannah.

Hannah James (bass) led a piano trio with Adrian Keevil (piano) and Paul Derricott (drums) at Smiths.

Early days

Zachary Li was new to me but he'd started playing piano at 4 and achieved his AMEB Grade 8 at 14 so I shouldn't have been surprised with the effectiveness and commitment from the first notes of the Mozart Sonata that started his concert.  Played from memory, like all the pieces, expressive, firm and confident, quick and loud but also dynamic and nicely balanced hands.  Then followed a JS Bach prelude and fugue and another later form Mendelssohn and an oddly different Pink Nautilus from Michael Kieren Harvey, all handfulls of percussion over the whole 8 octaves and busy and driving and handfuls of arpeggiations.  This was different.  Then a very lovely Samuel Barber with ostinato left hand and a Ballade from Chopin.  Quite a range of styles and all done with musical maturity to my ears.  Then, after thanks and bows, his sister Lillybelle joined him for a four handed encore.  Just stunning and unexpected from such a young performer, a student of Stephanie Neeman.  I wonder are we seeing early days.

Zachary Li (piano) performed at Wesley and encored four-handed with his sister Lillybelle Li (piano).

Tastefully typical

Sally Whitwell is a Canberra resident and it was she who designed a deliciously effective description on her day.  She earlier spoke of being in a rut with choirs and finding this enlivening as a musical interpretation of our true lives: three coffees a day, breakfast, cat, veggies for lunch, emails, housekeeping, visitors for dinner and sleep with a book club thrown in.  A typical day but with wonderfully inventive music, some borrowed, some original.  So we got Michael Nyman Miserere with Three ways to vacuum your house and an indie Oxford comma and a delicious sleep from Eric Whitacre.  And such a capable choir to sing it all, a towering soprano, capable parts and harmonies and a division (interestingly at the vacuuming and later dinner) of the women's voices then the men's.  So cute nad joyful and true stories told with superbly effective choral complexities in all manner of styles, Sally herself and Nyman and Whitacre and lesser names and Indie rockers Vampire weekend and some musical theatre from Beauty and the Beast and one work by OC's emerging composer in residence Aija Draguns, with Sally's piano accompaniment and Dan Walker's direction and a clarinet in there somewhere.  Delicious, delightful and down to earth.

Sally Whitwell (piano, direction) created the program Musica Domestica : a musical diary of a remote worker ... in thirteen chapters and with Aija Draguns wrote some original music for Oriana Chorale under Dan Walker (conductor) and one clarinetist that I can't name.

Joy of the dance

It was a pleasure to take in Musica da Camera with 2 basses from the audience.  This was such an interesting and inviting program and well presented.  The MD was Robert Harris and the title dances and suites and there were plenty of them, nicely bouncy and rhythmic for dance.  But RH is a viola player and the core theme was the presence of this lower sounding instrument, or at least moderately lower sounding for any cello of bassist.  Maybe not so much lower as rich and big and just a fifth below the violins.  And the bottom end filled out with Dorit Herskovits, Robert's wife and fellow long term professional.  But the program was the feature and so inviting.  Two pieces by Telemann, a concerto for two viols and an Ouverture-suite and a Schubert valse.  Then a truly lovely modern Australian piece, River Valley dawn by Emma Greenhill, picturesque in its presence.  Then five raucous and polytonal Greek dances from Nikos Skalkottas and a waltz and a tango from Elena Katz-Chernin and to finish the pizzicato polka from brother Strauss.  And these works had relevance to RH and DH, Dorit having studied with Elena, they having toured the Greek musics, Telemann being a favourite and generally the joy of the dance, too, I guess.  A lovely concert and nicely played. 

Robert Harris (director, viola) led Musica da Camera Canberra in Cook with a repeat at Gundaroo.  Bottom enders were Dorit Herskovits and Kate Murphy (basses).

Reminiscent of improv

An impromptu is a classical piece that's "reminiscent of improvisation".   Today I heard four impromptus on piano.  It's probably not easy to think of an orchestra improvising, but I've described the piano as "an orchestra in a box" but that's probably because I'm a bassist and we play low and mostly single notes.  The multiple fingers and 8 octaves and 88 accessible keys on a piano seem like all and everything to me.  Perhaps guitarists would think differently: they only have 6 strings but they can form chords, play associated bass line and melodies, mostly at the same time.  Today was Mark Jurkiewicz playing four Schubert Impromptus.  The program put it best; I won't even try.   "The first Impromptu in C minor blends elements of sonata, variation, and through-composed structures.  The second impromptu in Eb major is a swift moto perpetuo with a ternary design.  The third impromptu is a flowing and meditative piece in Gb major, charaterized by long melodic lines and unbroken triadic accompaniments.  The fourth and final impromptu, in Ab major, starts in Ab minor and is characterized by cascading arpeggios and a chordal response."  Nicely put even if I prefer British spelling.  Suffice to say that Mark was trained at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw so is close to the sources of such music.  And played from memory with intense presence and interpretation.  Always so good to hear another concert from Mark.

Mark Jurkiewicz (piano) performed Franz Schubert Four impromptus D.899 op.90 at Wesley.

CJ's 20th

It was just a week or so ago when I published CJ's 3,000th blog post.  Today I/we celebrate CJ's 20th birthday.  20 years!  Tons of time and energy and a decent record of my musical journey over those years and how it crossed with Canberra and the Jazz School and travels and my later interests in classical and recording.  I write up most of my musical events and some other public events that I might attend other than some Tilt jazz gigs which are not too common but would be too seriously indulgent.  Sadly, CJ has missed my recent mix/mastering of multitracks from Bevan at Smiths because those home-based duties don't quite fit as an event although they are a fascinating task, a revealing way to attend a gig ("All about the bass") and a nice gift to the performers.  I notice the seriousness of my commentary has declined over time given I've said most things many times, but the effectiveness of the record persists and the list of performers just keeps growing.  I always referred to these posts as reports rather than reviews anyway.  As for records, CJ has 6,787 index entries as I write this, including band names, performers' names, locations outside Canberra and various other items.  And there's Canberra Jazz Group on Facebook which sat a few years after its creation in 2018 then took off as a gig promotion site and today has 2,437 members.  Thus it goes and it goes on.  I can't imagine life (or remember gigs) without it.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

COMA alert

I’m in Adelaide again to visit family. I always check out the jazz around and this particularly interested me: COMA Creative Original Music Adelaide. But then I had visited the venue, the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Thebarton (the Wheaty) so maybe I’d happened on this group. I couldn’t attend this night but all gigs are streamed then released on Bandcamp as audio and YouTube as video so I could catch snippets on the night then follow up with a huge catalogue later. COMA convenes 1st and 3rd monday each month, requires 80% original content and presents 2x40min sets each night. The bands this night were Yung Horns and Similacrum 5. YH was somewhat jazz-influenced indie-pop, a duo of trom/vocals and keys/tpt, nicely melodic and infectious and a decent voice out front. S5 was a quintet and, even with a visiting trumpet, was wonderfully adventurous. The configuration (tpt, tnr, pno, bs, dr) was stock-standard but very unexpectedly they introduced a single 30-min number with a string of themes and melodies and solos all round. Some wonderfully inventive piano, a lovely bass solo, some great interplay in the horns, complex heads and varied feels. I’ve just skipped through the full work but was mightily impressed. This non-profit venue-cum-club has been running these gigs since 2005 and covers fields of jazz, improv, new classical and electronica. COMA even presents a radio show on 5MBS. Fascinating and from what I’ve seen well skilled and quite intriguing.

COMA (Creative Original Music Adelaide) presents gigs at the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, on 1st and 3rd Monday of each month. COMA streams and released all performances on YouTube and Bandcamp. The most recent gig was Yung Horns and Similacrum 5. Find more info and links from the COMA website.

http://coma.net.au

Song

I last wrote of this pair at Wesley with great admiration and pleasure, especially for a work telling of a dying soldier's thoughts in WW1.  That concert visited the romantics and the eras before our admittedly very transactional times, to use the current parlance.  This return was equally satisfying for its training and skills in voice and piano but also a return to earlier times.  This was a fascinating investigation into musical takes on Shakespeare's language by Gerald Finzi and Roger Quilter and a group of songs by Vaughan Williams.  The program describes their takes as Shakespeare "rich and rhythmic ... in turns, witty, wistful and profound", Finzi "introspective and melancholic", Quilter "light and charming" and finally Vaughan Williams "reverent and human ... moments of serenity and soaring joy" in takes on music of George Herbert "deeply expressive and spiritual ... quiet intensity".  Thus is artsong, I guess: intelligent and reverent, fabulously skilled and beautifully performed and quite distant from our times to my ears.  Not that we couldn't do with some alternatives just at the moment.

Alasdair Stretch (baritone) was accompanied by Callum Tolhurst-Close (piano) at Wesley.

Degrees of separation

It's said that you are only 6 degrees of separation from anyone.  Maybe.   An old friend had shared a lift with George W Bush in the White House; 1 degree of separation: check.  I played a gig once at Rupert Murdoch's house out of Canberra and RM himself came up to the band, and in the break we spoke to several NY media executives, then Bob Hawke arrived in a helicopter; 1 degree of separation: check.  Micah Heathwood sat in with us at Molly and he was the support act for Kamasi Washington; 1 degree of separation: Check.  We were at that concert.  Micah opened and said it was their first concert in Sydney: at Carriageworks supporting Kamasi Washington.  What a nice place to start!  From the top the sound was dreadful.  Most obvious was a  huge stomach thumping kick that lasted beyond the first minutes.  Had they done a sound check before the gig?  Just 3 players and one singing.  But I could appreciate some oddly structured but well-maintained drum grooves over changing and unusual counts.  With soft and relatively indistinct guitar strums and notes, rich with delay and more, creating colour over the drums.  And keys that laid bass lines that again thumped the stomach or perhaps chordal work, but not distinct like that literally thumping bass.  Perhaps a solo somewhere but again not too clear.  And Micah with some vocals, indecipherable to my ears with my trade mark-tissue earplugs.  I took one out to listen but still no luck.  That stomach thump receded later but I still didn't catch lyrics.  Lyrics interest me.  To me they define song with intellect beyond emotion.  For lyrics,  I can ask Micah or wait for his upcoming recordings.  But despite sound, I was mightily impressed.  Inspired post-punk perhaps; floating jazz colour; contentious rhythm; even a lyric if I could hear it.  Richard mentioned shoe-gaze but there were also jazz chops and knowledge to inform it.  Hope to hear more and great congrats to Micah and Jamie and Max.

Micah Heathwood (drums, vocals) performed with Jamie Rea (keyboards) and Max Sturm (guitar) in support of Kamasi Washington at Carriageworks.

Kamasi 3000

This is CJ Blog post no. 3,000.  Blogspot keeps the count, not me, but it's opportune that a big international touring artist should get this post and also that it's someone who is making jazz as it is.  I like big bands and swing and bop and modern and the rest, but jazz must remain a mutating art to survive and Kamasi is doing that, with rap, with Thundercat and the like.  I'd prefer that the gig was not such a long drive (Carriageworks by the Sydney Central Station) and that it was a little more comfy (standing room only).  But this seems to go with the territory.  The territory was an 8-piece band touring Kamasi's latest album, Fearless movement, which is itself 1h26m long.  Probably the best I got from this was clarity about the music.  His albums are layered, complex, immensely busy and I love that, but live, as an 8-piece band, things were clearer.  Firstly, there was immense drive, energy, an unrelenting nature.  Drums and bass just never mild, all incessant grooves and variations just adding to interest but never weakening forward movement.  Drums obviously double pedal as in metal and bass dirty and distorted and big as and sometimes loudly bowed, even to a bowed solo. Kamasi, especially, played on that with long solos, sometimes dissonant, always yearning, screaming.  Perhaps keys was similar but he was hard to hear other than in one Moog solo.  Then the essential jazz structure was evident: head/melody, perhaps a limited chord structure or just a groove as base for lengthy solos.  DJ Battlecat could add to the rhythmic plays electronically, all turntabling or desk effects, or acoustically on percussion and singer Patrice could offer some words sometimes or perhaps a unison with a melody, reminiscent of overlays of vocals on albums, and I think just one balladic song, but mostly offering visual presence to the groove.  Bass did that too, although he was far more muscular in his movements.  The others mostly perused while not soloing or accompanying.  The front line of three - Kamasi tenor sometimes piano; his father Rickey soprano or flute; Ryan trombone - defined the melodies and that was a lovely sound over the driving grooves.  There was a pleasant vibe from the band, too, from Kamasi's chatter and interested phone videos and pics of the audience to end and Patrice's gentle interpretations in dance.  It felt like good will.  Quite a few around me (me too) were moving to this music.  And that lovely sense of inviting melody that Kamasi plays with in heads before his strident, raucous solos.  His albums are far more obscure, less obviously thus structured given layers of plays and embellishments that don't go live, although there were some recordings on stage, not least to introduce a particularly busy first few bars of his daughter's invention, Asha the first, and quite strangely a rap later in the piece.  We were pretty close to stage so saw well but not too sure of the sound, losing voice and keys mostly.  Maybe it was our location, although there was a central line array for the "dance" floor.  But so be it. And being a modern event we were standing for 3 hours and sadly not really meeting too many of the locals.  I heard a suggestion of an arts crowd with a wide range of ages.  Maybe.  But a great gig and very much enjoyed and not nearly as difficult to attend despite cold and wind and the long drive to Sydney and back.  A very worthy gig for CJ's 3,000th post. 

Kamasi Washington (tenor, piano) led his octet West Cost Get Down with Rickey Washington (soprano, flute), Ryan Porter (trombone), Patrice Quinn (vox), DJ Battlecat (DJ, percussion), Brandon Coleman (keyboards), Miles Mosley (bass) and Tony Austin (drums) at Carriageworks, Sydney.

This is CJBlog post no. 3,000

Doing the rounds

The Wesley Scholars are a changing group and they perform several times each year and this Wednesday lunchtime concert was one.  And it was a doozy, very good and plenty varied.  First up was virtuoso piano from Joyu Yuen playing a Saint-Saens Toccata from memory.  This one was fascinating, merging early jazz, ragtime or New Orleans, with classical themes through dynamics and busy chordal figures throughout the octaves.  Then solo cello from James Munro playing a Ligiti sonata movement, again mad, complex, dissonant timing and bowing and intervals, and a hugely impressive great take.  Then one of the singers, Phoebe Bourke, accompanied by Joyo,  with a modern piece she'd played to the composer, then her examiner, then back to her origins with a karaoke take on a musical number, Your Daddy's son from Ragtime.  That was all heavy.  We all know and love Tom Lehrer and Martin Magill played piano and sang Poisoning pigeons in the park.  Sadly the vocals were a little lost but the audience could imagine the theme easily enough.  Then cellos again, with Chloe Law and James Munro playing three movements from David Popper Suite for two cellos.  Apparently the composer is known for his 40 demanding  etudes, but these were sweet and melodic if challenging and again so satisfyingly played.  And to finish up a longish lunchtime concert, another singer, Evangeline Osborne with Martin Magill, and the first song was that classic song from that classic album, River from Joni Mitchell Blue.  That just struck me as it would have many in the, shall we say, mature, audience.  And then Hoard Blake and A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.  So a huge expanse of music, not just established classical but newer fine musics and jazz and even musicals.  Stunning so well performed.  This was a special one.

The current crop of Wesley Scholars performed at Wesley: Joyu Yuen (piano), James Munro and Chloe Law (cellos), Martin Magill (piano, vocals), Phoebe Bourke and Evangeline Osborne (vocals).

Touring to the big smoke

Later in the night, after the book launch, is not so late for jazz these days.  We must be an ageing cohort.  Whatever, Ben Lerner was playing at Smiths at 7pm with his quartet on tour before recording an album with ABC and they were something pretty special.  The others were Steve Barry, well known and big handed with busy, rich, arpeggiated solos; Max Alduca, for some time trained locally, of solid groove with busy syncopations and some quick fills up the neck; and Alex Young, new to me but again syncopated, intensely grooved, sharply snared and creatively responsive.  They were all a pleasure, with Ben's lithe and expressive alto over, playing his compositions.  I reminded me of bop, heads and solos and groove, but not neo-bop.  That was conservative; this was more creative, open to broader stylistic influences, far more varied in chordal structures and not all 2-5s but you could still hear those pentatonic or other solo patterns that were just so effective from the alto and the heads were intriguing and often unexpected while the intensity and drive remained up.  This was some fascinating music and it's not at all surprising that Ben is off to NYC and Manhattan School of Music.  We can only wish him well but he's got a great start.  In the meantime, I look forward to mixing his gig at Smiths and later hearing the band's take from whatever ABC studio.

Ben Lerner (alto, compositions) led his quartet at Smiths comprising Ben with Steve Barry (piano), Max Alduca (Bass) and Alex Young (drums).

When much new is old

It's a while since I attended my last book launch, although I hear plenty of similar discussions on ABCRN, but this one caught my eye.  Allan Answorth, barrister and part-time academic at UCan, was speaking on his latest publication, The Role of Rhetoric in Politics and the Media, in conversation with Jack Waterford.  It's a very local outing.  I read JW religiously each week, enjoying his observations and admiring his long knowledge, once Canberra Times editor and currently long-term opinion writer.  And a practising barrister and part-time academic looks to be a perfect source for a book on rhetoric, especially one who claims a long term interest in philosophy and a string of other intellectual interests.  The book outlines a range of linguistic, logical and ethical fallacies that are used in rhetorical technique then analyses two speeches by the current US president in this context.  The numbering and cross references in the book are complex and I am yet to clearly identify the number of fallacies discussed, but JW suggested over 150.  Amusingly, AA advised the naming of these fallacies is variously in common English or less common Ancient Greek for those known from that time.  There is history in such discussions.  Anyway, an interesting and occasionally amusing discussion and well informed on such matters.  Thus can someone trained as a barrister and subsequent academic compose.  Looking forward to reading his written words.

Allan Anforth (barrister, academic, author) was in conversation with Jack Waterford (journalist, opinion writer) at the launch of his book 'The role of rhetoric in politics and the media' at Paperchain bookshop, Manuka.