Top 5 of 2010

This is a piece I wrote for extempore. It's a great site, and has been a great (printed) journal, published by Miriam Zolin. I'm not the only one to present their top 5 - see others online from Mike Nock, John Shand, Roger Mitchell, John McBeath and others including a few Canberra locals, Keith Penhallow and Brian Stewart. Mine are pretty local and intimate and perhaps plebian, but the choices spell variety and richness to me. Fascinating!

My Top 5 of 2010

It’s an interesting task to collect my five most significant jazz experiences of 2010. I can revisit my memories easily enough through my blog (CanberraJazz.net), which is as much a record for me as reports for others, but the selection is the hard part. These are my most intense memories as I scan through my blog, but there’s an inevitable subjectivity. They may not be the most renowned players (viz. Shorter, Patitucci, Jamal, Marsalis aren’t included) but they are significant and they all said something special to me on the night.

Steve Newcomb & Hannah Macklin Steve and Hannah visited Canberra from hometown Brisbane, which seems to be undergoing a cultural renaissance. Just a bar gig in a noisy environment, but I loved the intriguing lyrics and complex electronics that made a duo into a looped orchestra and harmonised choir. All confirmed on the CD which they were promoting. This is jazz training applied to electronica-cum-pop with considerable profundity.
http://canberrajazz.blogspot.com/2010/01/delightfully-different.html

Tina Harrod Spellbinding and touching singing with a fabulously capable and understated backing band of Matt McMahon, Jonathon Zwartz and Hamish Stewart. Somewhere in the area of R&B/soul but again with great jazz playing, including one of my favourite bassists (I have to admit that I play bass).
http://canberrajazz.blogspot.com/2010/02/underneath-your-spell.html

Roil An eye-opening visit to free playing. Chris Abrahams, Mike Majkowski and James Waples introduced one tune each and the developments were detailed and responsive and deeply communicated between musos and to the audience. I can struggle with minimalism and free, but this was clear and purposeful and deeply satisfying.
http://canberrajazz.blogspot.com/2010/03/roil-not-my-ales.html

Sandy Evans Trio Sandy started the night with her trio of Brett Hirst and Toby Hall, and these were great tunes and wonderfully played. But it was the performance of her CD-length suite, When the sky cries rainbows, that floored me. It comprises about a dozen pieces or themes that tell of personal tragedy around illness. It was obviously deeply felt and wonderfully played by a very sympathetic group. The trio was joined by Miroslav Bukovsky, James Greening and Luke Sweeting for my most touching musical experience of my year.
http://canberrajazz.blogspot.com/2010/06/when-sky-cries-rainbows.html

Anjali Perrin I visited London during the year and lucked on a great night of jazz. The first duo included a graduate of our own local Jazz School at the ANU, now playing the London theatre scene, pianist Mike Guy. The second band was a quartet led by singer Anjali Perrin with Ross Stanley, Davide Mantovani and Enzo Zirilli. The band was just thrown together but made up of some of the best on the London scene. I remember great grooves and intriguing solos, but especially intelligent rearrangements and reharmonisations of the most common of tunes (Autumn leaves, Love for sale, Never will I marry, etc) that played with the audience’s memories. These were standards performed with great invention and easy skills.
http://canberrajazz.blogspot.com/2010/08/lucking-out-later.html

That’s my five. But there’s so much more: Australian Youth Orchestra performances their summer camp; concerts by Jacam Manricks, Vocal Sampling, Vertical, Marcin Wasiliewski, Pan Francis, Java Quartet, Paavali Jumppanen and many others; Henry IV Pt 1 at the Globe in London under the rain; many gigs by local musos including staff and students at the ANU Jazz School and the performers at our Jazz Uncovered 2010. And thanks to the various players I perform with, because that’s the most fun of all: Brenton, Peter, Mike, Leanne, Richard, Monica.

Eric Pozza is a long time jazz lover, bassist and author/editor for CanberraJazz.net

Lucking out later

Mike Guy told me before the gig that I'd got lucky: I'd chosen a great night to visit the Archduke. The Anjali Perin Quartet was hot: a good choice. By the end of the night, I was swinging and totally in agreement. It was just a pick-up gig. This was not a regular, rehearsed band, but these were wonderfully competent musicians. Presumably amongst the best in London: stunning stuff and wonderfully enlivening. They were just arrangements of standards, some funky interpretations, some lovely swinging walks and bouncing twos-to-the-bar and syncopations, but this was bliss. This is why we follow this music. Emotional truth, collegial sharing, hype-free, and all with a well informed skill-set.

Anjali was once a classical pianist and violinist. She was also a commercial lawyer. Then she studied her masters at a local London jazz school, and now she's been professional for 5 years. She's mature. She's educated and subtle. She's entertaining with patter and good humour. All that a singer should be. She's also a lover of the great singers, Sarah Vaughan and the like, so there is intense involvement that expresses itself in hand and body movements and richly interpreted lyricism. And vocalese, and pitches that slip over the octaves, and arrangements, and even scat that I can enjoy. This is authentic stuff. And the band: such a great rhythm section. Davide, the bassista Bolognese who has been resident in London for 20 years, had a soft and un-edgy tone that was none-the-less always present. Easy and unforced accompaniment and frequent solos that sang. Drummer Enzo, the other Italian connection, sat with deceptive simplicity, but close your eyes, and this was recording quality: easy grooves, unforced fills, sharp yet understated. I felt Ross stood back earlier, but loosened during the night to longer solos and more adventurous substitutions. Powerful playing and open expression. The whole band just leapt to attention from the first bars of the first set, with a busily syncopated Love for sale. Such energy, solid swing and long adventurous latin solos and montuno accompaniments. Then into Yesterdays and Anj's delightful and very black scat and fluid sense of time. Thereafter, Ellington's In a mellow tone, Softly, You don't know what love is, and a more obscure number done by Chet Baker, Do it the hard way. Also Bye bye blackbird moving from New Orleans to New York, Never will I marry, a Sam Cooke's 12/8 A change is gonna come, and that bouncy Honeysuckle Rose, which speaks with the most suggestive lyrics, as we were told. All pretty obvious as a repertoire, but done with energy, tightness, driving grooves and inventive solos.

Can I say more? A wonderfully entertaining but also intellectually satisfying outing for a pickup band of informed and tasteful and heavily grooving musicians. Anjali Perin (vocals) led a quartet with Ross Stanley (piano), Davide Mantovani (bass) and Enzo Zirilli (drums).