No doubt

It's exciting to watch a musician develop, through training and subsequent experience. I've watched Hannah James but it's some time since I've heard her play. She has family here in Canberra, but she hasn't played too often in recent years, at least not at gigs I could get to. In fact, it's 2 CDs since I've heard her play live, especially with her HJ Trio. It was a wonderfully mature performance. Jamie Cameron was drumming for this gig with just 2 practices under his belt and he did a nicely capable and committed job. The compositions were mostly Hannah's, just one from Casey and another cover from No Doubt / Gwen Stafani (that's something I didn't know: a common favourite for Hannah and me) and one favourite standard. The writing was pensive at times, often so on intros; there were some twisty melodies and Hannah, on bass, didn't excuse herself the unison line; there were stories to tell. Annie's revenge spoke of Blackbeard's pirate ship called the Queen Anne with a oddly delayed 5/4 groove. For Geoff was a dedication and commission for Geoff Page that could be swung or syncopated. They mostly swung it here. Number one had a Dave Holland Conference of the birds chordal feel. Richie Beirach's Elm was the standard but it was no obvious cycling Cole-Porter-esque piece. The other one didn't make it to either of the CDs but I liked the Corea-cum-Stanley Clarke feels. Effigy made it to both CDs in significantly different interpretations. Casey is a masterful pianist who I always enjoy. Listen to the recent HJT CD recorded for SIMA and be converted. Jamie was playing after just two rehearsals but was convincing. Obviously checking the charts and concentrating, but unleashing some highly delayed and unexpected solo syncopations on two snares. And Hannah was playing her best: intriguing, exploratory thumb position solos, steady accompaniment, mobile accompanying grooves with open and responsive sycopations. I love this style, less centred and precarious than swing but open and exploratory. It's what jazzers do now, now that swing is the stuff of, at most, tune for the night. It's exhilarating. Hannah and her trio are doing it with searching honesty and gentle panache.

Hannah James (Bass) led a trio with Casey Golden (piano) and Jamie Cameron (drums) at the Gods.

Calm amongst frenzy

It was a big guitar night in Canberra, and I guess most guitarists were at the Satriani/Vai/Lukather gig. I love screaming guitars but I didn’t think my ears could take the onslaught or my mind the endless rock repetition, but I didn’t miss out on the guitar front with Song Fwaa. They were playing to a much smaller audience at the Loft, but I dare say the level of musical intellect could have been higher. This is not your standard jazz. My ear was first taken by David Reaston on an electric classical, (nylon-strung) guitar, a slab with wings and presumably a piezo pickup. It had an unusual amplified sound, a woody tone with lots of attack, made more unusual with various effects including an otherwordly Moog. He played with pick or with classical technique and a few times with e-bass style, but I was most taken by the rich chording, the concurrent bass and treble lines interspersed with chords, the ascending exercise-like arpeggios with extensions over the full neck (not easy!), and some oddly inventive ostinato lines that took a bass role. This was not jazzy, although structured often like jazz and with improvisation, but more classical in sensibility and instrumentation. I was later informed that he’d studied jazz then classical guitar and composition and it didn’t surprise at all. This was great technique and a very different sensibility and some very complex and intricate compositions.

I was also watching Jamie Cameron on drums. This is a bass-less band, and I noticed again the prominence of the thuddy kick drum at the bottom end. But also the open eyes that Jamie had for the others, and the way he followed and spoke in unison with both David and Martin Kay on alto sax, sometimes to state some contorted melody, sometimes to slap in unison, sometimes launching into a solo against a band ostinato (on the final tune - some things never change), sometimes just deliciously feeding off a solo. Lovely drumming that spoke the tunes rather than laying out a groove, and drumming of considerable dynamic range of loud slapped toms or open spaces.

It was only at the end that I moved my attention to Martin on alto. He’d introduced the tunes with a literate angular wit that had us all chuckling. (I never saw the Fantastic Terrific Munkle, one of his earlier projects, but I’d heard the CD and I’d enjoyed their humour and iconoclasm immensely). His alto was again not jazz-trained. The lines were often scalar snippets moved modally or through keys, fast and accurately formed with skilled technique, coloured with breaths and key slaps and the like. His training, too, was classical and it was evident in his conception and performance.

How else did the band show classical training? Intricate compositions and good reading and references to Ligeti and Cage. A series of tunes were called Tacit studies. They were highly truncated snippets of melody that the band read and played in unison - stunning for long silences and intense, rapid-fire fills. Ligeti made an appearance with his goat. There were a series of extended epic settings of tragic, heroic animal stories: Ligeti’s goat taken into space by Haile Salassie and returned to Earth; the happy song of recovered polar bear (until he was shot); the seven times cloned animal interpreted as loops. There were two covers, too, one of Scott Joplin’s Maple leaf rag and another of Tina Turner’s What’s love got to do with it, but the interpretations were very well coloured and disguised. John Cage made his appearance in Cage the Gaoler that responded to conservative reaction to Cage’s music. Whether these were all stories on the night or not, I don’t know, but this was ironic and fun as well as being musically challenging and inventive. I liked it, I wondered on it, I revelled in the technical skills, but I could well imagine it to be too demanding for some who might not return for a second set.

Song Fwaa (=Sangue froid, Fr. Cold blooded) comprise Martin Kay (alto sax), David Reaston (guitar) and Jamie Cameron (drums). They played at the Loft.

Cyberhalides Jazz Photos by Brian Stewart

Fine and spacious

When Lucian McGuiness brought his quartet to the Loft, he had given it a name: Impermanent Quartet. I like that. It speaks of change and this band is aware of change. Where there’s change, there’s no end of history, and I felt an awareness of history in this sound.

The band is trombone, alto, bass and drums so it’s chordless. This lineup lends the sound an indistinct, open feeling and leaves lots of space. I heard the guys filling with delicious harmonies and counterpoint, a quite surprising empathy from the two horns and an easy, unforced, but inquisitive take on melody. This was not the jazzer as individualist heroic soloist. This was soloist as a searcher for purposeful lines and as a bouncing musical collaborator. There’s a reason for the responsiveness of the horns to each other. Lucian and Dan had played together from schooldays, through music school and into professional life. There were a few points where I felt the found harmonies and the unison lines were so close as to be telepathic. I hadn’t picked it up, but Alex mentioned a similar relationship between trom and bass. The high bass notes reach into tenor territory shared with trombone, and Alex spoke of enjoying this interplay. Even the drums came in on this, when spaces opened for tiny two or four bar solos. I heard history in the simple melodic concepts, but the present in some unexpected intervals and structures and a certain ironic humour in the take on melody. There was history, too, in the collective soloing, although the twisting and weaving through rich syncopations and polyrhythms was modern. I wasn’t surprised to hear a Dave Holland tune, because there’s a similar web of sound woven by that band, or to hear tunes by trombonists Nils Wogram or Bob Brookmeyer. But most tunes were by Lucian. I guessed it was a standing joke that the tunes had human names: James, Angel, Ray, Paul, Charlie and Victoria. Victoria was a lovely slow unison melody. I heard hints of Zoe Hauptman’s Buttercups and wondered if this might be a Sydney style, but the Hauptmans were also in Lucian’s school band/music school milieu and they still play together, so maybe it’s just this Canberra/Sydney coterie. What other impressions? Strongly syncopated pedals on bass and some wonderful bass solos there were common when the two horns dropped out; plenty of changes of time – fours and sixes and a five; easy swings and pre-bop sensibility on the Brookmeyer tune; volume at a subdued human level; careful articulation that confirmed for me their concern with melody.

This was open, informed, approachable music with a deceptive simplicity and I loved it. The Impermanent Quartet was led by Lucian McGuiness (trombone) with Dan Junor (alto sax), Alex Boneham (bass) and Jamie Cameron (drums).

A little piece of Africa

There’s an obscure album from the 1970s which is one of the first that I ever bought, and perhaps for that reason, one of my all-time favourites. The record (they were records then) was “Love from the sun”* by Norman Connors. It’s from the “Back to Africa” era, when black jazzers took to wearing coloured African skullcaps, appended African names (eg Mwandishi Herbie Hancock) and supported the Muslim Brotherhood. The concert last night by Mosaic, with a visiting master percussionist, Bandika Ngao of Kenya, reminded me of this era. Actually, the association is blunt: Kenya is 90% Christian and there are masses of musical styles throughout Africa. But the complex African drum rhythms, the centrality of vocals, and the sheer joy of both Mosaic and Love from the sun justify some association.

Mosaic was touring to release their new CD, and in Canberra for several performances for the Multicultural Festival. They are another excellent band out of Sydney’s Jazzgroove stable. Judy Campbell (vocals, some African instruments) convenes the band, and writes much of the music with Mark Ginsburg (tenor, soprano saxes, vocals, African drums). Other members on the night were Justine Bradley (vocals), Michael Carr (a visiting pianist from Austria), Brendan Clarke (bass), Jamie Cameron (drums), James Muller (guitar) and Bandika Ngao (percussion, vocals).

Mark Ginsburg opened the night with a quartet set (Mark, Michael, Brendan, Jamie). These were mostly originals by Mark. This was an earthy, rather than flashy set, and its authenticity was to set the scene for the rest of the night. There was good, strong swing, solid and honest, quality but not flashy soloing, some less common times, some nice unison accents by the whole band.

The whole band arrived for the next, blissful two sets. There was authentic African chant from Bandika, complex African rhythms from Bandika often supplemented by several other drummers, beautiful soaring voices, sometimes unison, sometimes three-part harmonies, great but never overstated solos all round. It was a marked change from the individualist approach of choruses and solos we usually hear at jazz clubs. I love that, of course, but this was communal, with complex rhythms growing out of multiple drum parts and rich vocals arising from simple but joyous melodies and equally happy and optimistic lyrics. The band was smiling, the vocalists glowing and Bandika beaming. These solos were integral to the music, so perhaps it’s not appropriate to highlight them, but I have to mention James Muller’s expert contributions which were frustratingly short, Bandika’s solos for his expertise and for the opportunity for those present to hear authentic, rich, African drumming, and a lovely solo by Brendan with his slightly edgy but rounded sound, accurate intonation and perfect suitability to the style. I found it a night of bliss. To end, they travelled out of Africa with a variation on a Jewish new year tune which you are unlikely to hear in your local synagogue, and then a final Brazillian-style tune called Meeting point. This was ecstatic and danceable, reminding me of Flora Purim and Airto. A fitting end to a joyous event.

From left, Michelle, Sebastian, Eric, Martha

Strangely, the audience seemed to be different at Hippo, perhaps due to the involvement with the Multicultural Festival. I include a pic of some people I met. Interestingly, two of them are jazz bassists: Eric, visiting from the Netherlands, and Sebastian, who had studied with George Urbasek and Eric Ajaye. Small world.

*“Love from the sun” is my little known treasure from Oct 1973. To get an idea of the quality, look at the performers: Norman Connors, DeeDee Bridgewater, Eddie Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Buster Williams, Carlos Garnett, Bill Summers, Gary Bartz, Onaje Allan Gumbs, Kenneth Nash, Hubert Laws, Nathan Rubin, Terry Adams. Norman Connors seems to have moved into R&B, but the Net suggests his early ‘70s works are worthy jazz albums. This one's a goodie.

Listen to Judy Campbell's Mosaic on MySpace