Travels and memories

I associate saxes with jazz rather than classical, but I was taken by the Andromeda Sax Quartet that played at Wesley.  I was recording and I had recorded them before and the theme of the concert, Mass transit, seemed pretty pedestrian (well, not on foot, but you get the idea) but it was anything but.  So we heard a string of cities imaged by composers in their youthful ramblings, Cordoba, Sarajevo, Koln and Addis Ababa from Guillermo Lago and Lisboa, Casablanca, Alger and Retour from Pedro Iturralde, and a view of the worlds from Irish composer Emma O'Halloran after a move to Miami, picturing the city of night life and ocean.  These are not particularly known composers showing the adventurousness of the Quartet and the rarity of the sax quartet format, probably/perhaps both.  The format is Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone saxes, so a neat choral-like structure and related somewhat to the much more common string quartet.  They added a piano for the second half of the show which included the concert's namesake, Mass transit.  This was originally written for string quartet and piano and arranged for this format: very successfully even if the piano was lost amongst some loud horns (excuse the jazz-ism).  This particularly interested me, given it was a memory of the composer's, Sam Wu's, memories of public transport in Shanghai, metro, gardens, train announcements and the rhythms of motion.  It was particularly interesting for me as we'd been in Shanghai just weeks before and travelled the 300kpm, 7min maglev trip to the airport which appears as mvt.3 Airport express.  So it was close to home but also loud and insistent and adventurous and wonderfully capable.  Chatting with the group afterwards, I heard of workshops and friendships with the masters of the classical sax world.  I guess this is a pretty small community and well known within its own world: something that strings or even woodwinds and the rest might not know.  Whatever, this was a fabulously interesting outing, loud, skilled, mature and responsive and open to all manner of new classical and related musics, from jazz-like grooves from bari and tenor through pretty 30's-like big bands to C20th classics.  Catch them if you can.

Andromeda Sax Quartet comprises Paige Gullifer (soprano), Ryan Piccione (alto), Henry Docker (tenor) and Sam Dong (baritone) and Catherine Li (piano) joined them for the second half of the performance.

Deserving youth

I record Wednesday lunchtime concerts at Wesley and I often hear upcoming pianists, experienced with great teachers and Eisteddfod and the likes and it's a pleasure.  This day was Shreyas Sunkaraneni who I had seen before but not as a solo concert performer.  He was seriously impressive, capable, memorised, authentic and emotive, playing Haydn, Chopin, Brahms and interestingly and more diversely, Debussy.  I drooled over the delicacy of the playing, the beautifully spelled out passages, some free floating times and insistent, forceful statements.  The Haydn was a Sonata in C minor, the Chopin an Etude in C# minor, the Brahms a Rhapsody in G minor, but the  most demanding and exquisite with modern colours and pensive restraint was Debussy, La soiree dans Grenade.  This arrived at a recent century, with what I interpreted as a dancing, dotted rhythm, Habanero to teacher Marie.  But all, varied as it was, was played with seriousness and commitment despite a few slipups.  So be it; this was serious and demanding music played from memory by a young player.  In fact the concert was entitled Delicacy and Passion.  How could I question that?  I was impressed and look forward to being so again.  Youth never ceases to impress me after having left it somewhat behind.

Shreyas Sunkaraneni (piano), student of Marie Cull, performed Haydn, Chopin, Brahms and Debussy at Wesley.

Voice as other

There was a second choral concert at Wesley and I stayed on to record that one too.  This was The Australian Voices, a very professional and young outfit singing original Australian compositions with very much creativity and originality.  I wrote of CCS earlier as the Sound of voice, as the voice as the most human of instruments.  I'm not sure I agree after this concert, hearing voices sounding as cockatoo shrills, Aboriginal motifs, wind and water and birdlife.  Maybe this is Voice as colour or presence.  Whatever, it was fabulously professional, this Queensland choir touring through Canberra for the day, with lighting and AV and memorised music and unaccompanied.  The whole was  enthusiastically conducted and introduced by John Rotar, who also provided several compositions, by Deborah Cheetham Fraillon and others, on themes of Uluru, creation stories, climate requiems, valleys and circuses, with an absolutely entertaining and apt and very creative take on Waltzing Matilda to end the show with a considerable glee.  But I loved especially to watch the singers performing birdsong or other, obviously serious in their renditions and still enjoying the whole.  (Maybe like me, when I sing a stilted song to our bemused local magpies.  It's much recommended: they may look confused but they never swoop.)  Suffice to say there were some superb voices here and we heard them also in solo, for song as well as rendition, with fascinating modern Australian composition of great relevance to our present-day wide brown land.  CCS may have been the Sound of Voice but maybe TAV were the Voice of Sound, but together they presented a most effective array of modern Australian choral music for a lucky audience over one afternoon at Wesley. PS, excuse the photo which was taken in warmup: the best I could manage given lighting.

The Australian Voices performed unaccompanied on tour at Wesley under John Rotar (conductor, MD).

The sound of voice

I've come to love the sound of the voice, the most human of instruments.  I've also come to love a choral concert, so our annual outing of National Capital Orchestra and Canberra Choral Society is a highlight of my musical year.  We have done some amazing pieces in that format with 150 or even 180 people on stage at Llewellyn, singing Beethoven or Brahms, a mass or other.  It is something powerful and invasive.  Saturday arvo was another choral concert, with just piano accompaniment, and flute for a few pieces, at Wesley and I recorded.  The theme was Wanderlust, the conductor/MD was Dan Walker and the accompanists were Anthony Smith and Sally Walker.  Not a bad outing!  Basically, they performed two sets of four short choral pieces and a final world premiere, a Dan Walker original entitled Arboterum with three movements with themes of our Canberra Arboretum's Bonsai garden, Forest of Remembrance and "Wide brown land", meaning Australia's botanic environment.  These three sets were separated by two duets of flute/piano.  Works were by contemporary composers and less, Sally Whitwell, Eric Whitacre and Dan, through Elgar, Lili Boulanger, Vaughan Williams, Bruckner and a few others.  The first set featured one work with female voices and a final work with the deeper male voices, quite fascinating in their different presences.  The second set had the choir in mixed position, so voices were intermingled rather than grouped as SATB, thus demanding a more individual role in pitch and the rest.  I was stunned at the integration it produced, the distribution of sound, the balanced and clear pitch were immediately obvious if not too easy to define, all these voices melded together rather the positioned as a group.  Lovely and to be recommended.  So a wonderfully varied and interesting outing of our mates in CCS.

Dan Walker (conductor, MD) guided the Canberra Choral Society in concert at Wesley with accompaniment by Anthony Smith (piano) and Sally Walker (flute).

Leading from the bottom

I walked in on Ben's Sextet playing some of the most authentic sounding Miles hard bop that I'd heard, given great playing but also the right format, a front line of tenor, alto, bari saxes and a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums.  It was Molly on a Friday night and the scene was good and standing room only.  I greeted Wayne and Con and Chris and we stood listening.  Then Bolivia, another stock and stunner.  Everyone was doing their part, solos up front steady but insistent groove behind, and I was taken first up by the supremely neat heads as spelt out by the horns.  On through a few other tunes I didn't immediately recognise but in a similar style.  I presumed Ben had done a good deal of work transcribing.  Some chatter that I didn't catch so I just thought I wouldn't know the titles.  Then taken by a neat, expressive, understated solo from Ben, and so lovely and apt.  You can trust Ben's solos.  And some shared fours on drums and interestingly, two solos of very different approaches from Micah that surprised me with his soloistic variety.  Most impressive.  Then a chat with Con at the bar and I heard that Ben had actually written many of these tunes.  And these unknowns were good!  I knew of his preparation for this gig, but a string of originals of quality had me floored.  He'd also mentioned some challenging tunes, one with the title Smile.  I didn't recognise it.    Then later a very complex tune with radically varying counts which I recognised but couldn't place.  Ben later confirmed Domi & JD Beck Smile and I'm stunned to hear it in Molly.  Thus the evening was a stunner and so glad I could get there given China tiredness and the likes.  Bassist Ben stared as leader.

Ben O'Loghlin (bass, composition) led a sextet at Molly with Aaron Michael (tenor), Justin Buckingham (alto), Tom Fell (baritone), Mic Knight (piano) and Connor Moloney (drums).

China in 4, no.4

We didn't do too well finding local jazz, the venues mostly appearing to be bars and maybe with recorded music.  There was a Blue Note in Shanghai and some other locals of interest, House of Blues and Jazz, Heyday, Fairmont Peace Hotel with its old-time swingers, and perhaps a few other interesting spots, but by this time we were pretty worn out.  These were last days our crew was not up to the adventure.  But Virginia and I had had managed one local bar in tourist-town Zhangjiajie with piano/singer Yuan bao playing with midi drums and bass.  A decent singer but pretty loud so we moved around to be able to chat.  The local beers were good.  I also heard capable singing while crossing a bridge and homed in on an open-air staged singing performance, perhaps a contest, well-lit, multiple video-recordings and a mix desk and more.  It looked like a broadcast event, perhaps live.

China in 4, no.3

The four cities had specific tourist sites supplemented by pagodas, temples, palaces, restaurants.  Beijing featured Tien'anmen Square, Forbidden Palace, Mutianyu Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Birds nest, old Hutong alleys and a Chinese Opera and another historical performance dedicated to a revered female emperor, Wei Zetian (Second Zhou Dynasty, ~690 CE).  Zi'an was the first capital of CHina featuring the Summer Palace and Terracotta Warriors (~210 BCE) which were only discovered in 1974.  Amusingly we met a surviving farmer discoverer and his family and then cast our own little warriors to take home.  Zhangjiajie is pretty much a tourist town in Hunan with wondrous quartz-sandstone mountains made increasingly famous by the film series Avatar.  I missed my much-loved chili-rich Hunanese feeds given a health issue with one of our group, Fran from Melbourne, but she was lovely so no worries.  Finally Shanghai, modern and business-like, just for a day or so after a very late flight, so taken pretty easy.  This is modern China, after all, so we took the maglev (300kph) to the airport.

China in 4, no.2

Our group was originally 16, meeting up in Beijing, going on to Zi'an by fast train (300kph).  We split up after Zi'an, leaving 7 to fly (5 hours) to Zhangjiajie then Shanghai by plane (2 hours) and out.  The formal component was only 11 days and physically and nutritionally demanding, meaning plenty of big meals and plenty of buses to carry us around more locally.  It was great fun running into mother and daughter Sonia and Mailee (NZ) in Shanghai after losing them earlier.  And this was a great, amusing group: Canada, Aust, NZ, Indonesia, India, Brazil, England and more.  And several muso-relateds who were such fun to chat with: Mailee, once a jazz student, now a NZ indie session bassist and sports broadcast staffer; Julie living in Boston and seeing a raft of the best jazz players (one gig she spoke of was drums with 4 basses, Ron Carter, Victor Wooten, Steve Bailey, Justin Chancellor!!!) at Berklee and regularly seeking out jazz venues when she travels;  Virginia of London who works in marketing and management of musical acts including Placebo and whose company had first brought Nirvana to the UK (!!!).  Lots of chatting in this group for a tragic like me.  Also with Heinz and Maria who met at ANU while she did her PhD and he worked as a post-doc. Close to home!