Small world

The world is pretty small now.  I was free to catch London guitarist Tom Ollendorff playing a solo gig at Smiths on a Tuesday at lunchtime.  It turns out he was on a world tour promoting his new album with Aaron Parks and others and he came up from Sydney for the day to play a solo gig.  Odd, I thought.  But here is where the world is small.  I took a friend of his mother's home after the gig and it turns our his mother had spent a year in Canberra several decades back.  Canberra/London?  I guess that's why the short visit.  I did a little video and was processing later and our visitor, guitarist Harley Coleman, recognised Tom on the screen.  We are hosting Harley for a few nights for other musical commitments and he'd seen the trio the night before and had even travelled on the Murrays bus with him that morning from Sydney.  Ridiculously small world.  Whatever, Tom was magical playing favourite standards and some originals, all rich chords and solos lines, hugely precise and clear despite a rich reverb, pick and finger picking, fluid but rock stable timing in dots and foot taps, nicely balanced between bass notes and harmonic colours and solo phrasings.  I'd love to hear his trio, but then I've missed Hiromi, too, in the last week.  Harley told me he has classical guitar behind him.  It shows.  So, all manner of connections and a lovely, intimate, daytime gig.

Tom Ollendorff (guitar) played solo at Smiths on a Tuesday early-arvo.