Numbers game

Music, especially improv, is a numbers game, and this band was named for numbers. They are One Seventeen, a jazz funk trio in first year at the ANU School of Music and blowing a storm. Apparently they play around campus often. I caught them for the last set of an evening gig in the Coffee Lab, one of the new ANU venues, playing for mates from their college and others. This was no learner's outfit. It was driving, interesting, inventive, respecting and knowledgeable of their forebears. So we got Watermelon man and other such few-chord funk blowers and done with chops and nice feels. They could groove hard, then stop on a dime, then explore sidesteps and dissonances or funky polyrhythms. All solid and danceable and confident. Confident? They deserved it. Very nice and a very nice sign of a recovering School. Catch them if you can, enjoy the beer and perhaps a dance.

One Seventeen are Jamie Rea (piano), Peter Campion (drums) and Haris Hodzic (bass). They played at the Lab at ANU.