Delta I

Son no.1 told me of another series of streaming music concerts, this time of local bands around Canberra in various styles, playing at places as diverse as Blackbird, Smiths and The Basement.  Not sure what to expect, but it's a nicely broad education in local music.  Day 1 was JEP and MissM.  JEP are locals, jazz trained, playing Blackbird, Molly and the like.  Even Lake Burley Griffin, at least for this outing.  Very nice, very smooth, Herbie Hancock-ian deep groove, jazz funk.  Capable melodic playing all around, tight and nicely internally responsive, minimalist structures with perhaps with unexpected twists or inserted odd bars.  Plenty of piano lines and synth pads out front but everyone gets a solo.  I loved this one.  And I'd love to know where the power came, down there by the lake near the Museum.  We might hear them collaborating with some Canberra vocalists next year: I can't wait for that.  The stream continued with two songs from MissM, presumably self-penned.  Piano, vocals, immediate and touching, alto voice and accompanying piano.  I should have listened to words to really make a judgment, but again nice and well presented.  Both these artists perform are Blackbird.  The Delta sessions are organised by MusicACT and streamed free at 6pm Mondays until 15 Nov.  Find links at MusicACT on Facebook.

JEP and MissM performed for the streamed Delta Sessions.  From ACT each Monday to 15 Nov.  JEP comprises Jamie Rea (keyboards), Evan Marshalsey (bass) and Peter Campion (drums).

This is CJBlog post no. 2,400.

Final night then silence

The final night of the Earshift Festival featured The rest is silence.  They played several shorter tunes.  Spacey guitar, slow pensive melodies of alto perhaps with a parallel instrument, guitar or bass.  Spacious, floating, sparse. slow and thoughtful but not lethargic or leisurely and often of growing intensity.  Guitar, jangly and metallic tone, or fingerpicked, 4by4 chords, perhaps bowed bass.  Or bass pizz intro pattern, 6/4, fingerpicked guitar chords, sax intro unison melody with guitar.  Or guitar enters country-ish finger-picked chords, 4/4 with dotted feel, sax with pretty melody into unison with bass then heavy mallet drums and later a heavy slow rock rhythm.  Then my sound dropped out... Then I got sound on my phone...now the chat.  But first another short tune, Gesualdo written by Theo.  Again guitar finger picking in 4, nice melody, divergent drums, perhaps conflicting given his reputation for killing wives and children.  Then the chat of melancholy tunes and slow unfoldings.  They've played together since 2015 and it's a priority.  All members like singable, melodic themes so they start with melody which then may become unravelled over time.  As one said, simple then decomposed.  Only one tune has actually lyrics and they were written after the fact by a friend.  Perhaps "not a typical jazz group" given their subversion of the jazz approach, of virtuosity and solos.  They like collective improvisation, which is a jazz concept if quite old.  Songs are brought by individuals, not yet written collectively, then workshopped.  Initially they are mostly pretty bare.  Maddie brings the most developed pieces, most of which they never perform.  Livestreamed from a Brunswick band hall with mate Kyle on camera.  "Bit of a shambles, but it's a joyful shambles   No people in the room, but there's  still a performance focus".  They would welcome visitors and a live gig again. to "tap into energy of performance".  It was a satisfying, searching, intriguing outing.

The Rest is Silence comprises Flora Carbo (alto), Theo Carbo (guitar), Isaac Gunnoo (bass) and Maddison Carter (drums).  They performed for the final night of the online Earshift Festival 2021.

Face to face

There's always music before the chat although this chat was different.  First the music.  Host Jeremy led his band with Steve Barry, Noel Mason and Alex Hirlian in a quite professionally prerecorded setting.  These are very good players and this was a very satisfying modern jazz outing.  A wonderful drums entry from Alex, into a plaintive tenor melody, then a response, all in an 8-feel, then stops and starts on  a bridge and an end head and into a tenor sax solo.  Nice, punctuated, syncopated bass, swapping 8-bar piano and sax solo passages, then into piano with long 8th note lines, sax triplet drops, driving, busy, then some concurrent soloing, busy drums and a fade to end.  Really nice, but not the topic of the chat.  Instead that was Jeremy and Zoe Haupmann, artistic director of SIMA, talking of various things: the effect of COVID on musos and clubs, the use of streamed concerts, the intimacy and centrality of playing live with others and to an audience, engagements with live streaming, prerecords and struggles with tech.  The fact that you don't have to leave home.  But as Zoe said, she'd done enough gardening and surfing.  They talked of coming albums, coming shows, coming bookings as musos and as venue.  Talking hopefully of audiences also dying to get out to hear music live and happy to give support to venues and players.  Noting that Melbourne and Wangaratta jazz festivals were cancelled this year while Europe and the US is picking up for shows and tours.  Zoe has bookings to record with Ian Moss and festival gigs booked for next year with Missy Higgins and Ian Moss.  She spoke of the joy of bookings being received; "good to have hope" despite multiple reschedules.  But also of fears of lost musos and venues.  And of the particular demands for early/mid career musos and their limited opportunities for networking.  That always there is "no substitute for that live experience" and how we've learnt these things through COVID.  I learnt that the old (not original!) Basement is now Mary's Underground.  The performative ritual of musos and the concert experience of sitting still without checking phone as a liberty, some thing special, a sense of community, as something spiritual.  These are special moments and aren't forgotten: a feeling, unique and rare, precious.  Reminiscing on old time gigs with hubby Evan.  "Can't wait [for gigs to return]"  said Zoe.  And this chat also launched of the Jeremy's Face to Face video series, but it was not much discussed.

Jeremy Rose (tenor) performed with Steve Barry (piano), Noel Mason (bass) and Alex Hirlian (drums) then chatted with Zoe Hauptmann (artistic director of SIMA, bass) for the Earshift Festival.

Creating problems to solve

Scott Tinkler tonight for the Earshift Festival from Bruny Island.  Virtuosic playing, super-quick runs, from the top.  Challenging melodic statements of harmony.  Repetition, relations, snaps, staccato,  Then slow, muted lippy notes, querying rapid runs, thoughtful responses.  Overwhelming chops.  Blurted notes, staccatissimi, legato, all manner of tonguing.  And that blistering pace and the rests, the space to consider, to regroup.  Those lines, those fills, so precise and clear.  Glorious!  Alternating quarter notes, sixteenth runs, sixteenth note triplets, quite consistently.  This is day (?) of the Earshift Festival and the music has been and is great.  I am feeling Earshift could be our Sydney ECM to the world.  Not just wonderful and inventive playing but the album releases look great and sound like bells.  I am impressed as I work my way through the catalogue on Bandcamp.  Tonight's gig is no lethargic outing and my first words above make that clear.  The playing is only 10-15 mins per night and, as a fellow player, I find the comments just as intriguing.  Scott spoke of his approach to practice, to play what he wishes to play as a gig, not major or diminished scales but phrases with variation and development.  No preconceived ideas; just "be there and play".  Again Simon Barker was mentioned.  Play phrases; don't fill all the space (sounds Miles-ian).  Inverting the common fears of musos, "silence is tense; playing is comfy".  But despite the emphasis on improv and avoiding endless scalar practice, he did mention daily warm ups with various maintenance routines, too.  He plays brass, after all.  But always thinking harmonically and rhythmically; intuitively, not composed.  But also "you can't bring to the stage stuff you don't have ... that is what practice is for".  As for playing to the Net, prerecorded or live, there's a necessary learning curve and "this is better than nothing".  And a gem to finish: "Get out of stops and analysis, just play, create a problem and solve it, that's improv".  Says it all for an improvising player, really.

Scott Tinkler (trumpet) performed solo for the Earshift Festival.

And TikTok

My listen was delayed by a busy evening, but I caught it next morning.  Kristen singing in her detailed, embellished, richly glissed, complex but so well-controlled voice accompanied by herself on piano.  She's a local (Carmila, Qld) but now distant, teaching at HSLU in Lucerne.  The magic of the Net in lockdown.  There were some amusing interruptions, like a promise of a better solo on the album.  She'd wanted a new song for this event, but it was only half finished.  The less amusing interruptions were technical despite a decent connection (tested on speedtest.net) so some disappointment.  But then I remember family calls to Italy as a kid, through an operator, quick and costly, so I can live with occasional problems with free international video.  (I don't think it's just that, but I'll blame a reactionary, politicised LNP for a throwback, yet expensive, $A55b+, NBN nonetheless!)  These tunes are all personal, individual, purposeful lyrics and matching feels.  This is politics of the personal.  One song was He was a loaded gun.  "High on the hill looking down on the common folk...never to blame".  Come to think of it, this sounds possibly political, if expressed more personally.  She spoke of recording with Sam Anning: strange, that, a duet from both ends of the frequency spectrum, of tech and live-streaming with Dan Tepfer and working with others and how ideas are generated and shared, and the essential nature of visual presence, rather than "It's all about the music".  She mentioned motionless curlews here, of some interest to my family!  Even of performing on TikTok during lockdown.  Now that's something to chase up!.  Some very capable singing from a winner of numerous singing awards.  One thing more, I hadn't realised she'd sung at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth games but little surprise there!  Oh, and TikTok.

Kristen Berardi (vocals, piano) performed for the Earshift Festival.

Diversity

Chloe Kim is an improvising drummer in Sydney, female, born in Seoul.  I wouldn't normally highlight it for mostly a muso is a muso, but Chloe makes an issue of supporting genders and nationalities in jazz (good on her!) and more importantly, she just sounds different.  She performed a short solo piece that wasn't so much virtuosic as melodic.  She explained its structure as in four parts, uke, uke and guitar, guitar alone, guitar and drumset.  She would use sticks on the stringed instruments, giving a sound wonderfully jangly and metallic.  It started with simple 4/4 taps on the uke, undemonstrative, naturally developed, into the most sweet, perfectly collapsing fills and intriguing polyrhythmic lines on snare without snare engaged and toms, not much kick that I remember.  All the time with an awareness that sounded Asian to my uneducated ears.  I could believe that, given her background, of course, and Simon Barker as her teacher, known for his exploration of Korean drumming.  She talked of her solo albums and solo gigs, of strict, planned, disciplined practice with metronome and repetition versus improv over minimalist structure in performance, of imitation as disrespectful of self and the respected.  This last intrigued me but the success in her playing seems evident: there's a personal presentation here, doubly so in solo drum gigs.  Solo drum gigs?  That's challenging and unusual and also revealing of her approach.  Otherwise, she'd prerecorded for this event and that was obviously necessary given her shared housing situation.  But she valued the lessons that this demanded of her.  It's relevant that she'll soon be drumming for a Chicago radio station.  There are new possibilities with these suddenly ubiquitous technologies.  So a fascinating drums outing and a intriguing discussion  Unpretentious but delicious in performance and relevatory in purpose.

Chloe Kim (drums) performed for the Earshift Festival.

Switch

I can understand a bassist taking up another instrument.  Bass is so dependent on others; it's essential and powerful and a great provider of gigs, but supportive.  So we hear Cameron Undy, one of our excellent bassists out of Canberra now Sydney, doing a solo gig on guitar.  Another thing bass gives you is a sense of groove, rhythm, and this is greatly evident here.  Chords fairly simple, but an underlying African groove that defines the outing.  Cameron played through series of tunes.  I heard chordal plays, varying time signatures, moving accents and chords, sometimes complex, other times sitting on one or two chord vamps, perhaps with interposed beats, slow up to a new tune, in three, and so on.  Simple, inviting, meditative, unpretentious.  That's another aspect of the bass: it promotes unpretentiousness.  A lovely, honest outing.  But hearing his chat later, about post-grad studies of African music, of how African music is the earliest known source of music and how it's evident in so many cultures, esp. modern American, jazz, funk, soul, reggae, blues.  About the percussive, muted tones and diverse resonance and the instruments like marimba and mbira.  Then further on composition, the influence of maths and numbers and Buckminster Fuller and how he uses processes to make music, perhaps numbers and patterns, not needing to await that romantic inspiration.  How he'd done this with electronics, but returned to analog instruments after chats with Simon Barker.  All fascinating and revelatory.  How he writes in graphs, even.  More to explore here.  Given lighting, this was prerecorded, in a simple, ageing backyard with a pizza oven where he often plays with children and dog and guitar.  So a concert and chat both aurally satisfying and intellectually intriguing.  How I like it.  PS and FWIW, he played a short scale Marand acoustic guitar.

Cameron Undy (guitar) played in his backyard for the Earshift Festival

Piano

Sean Foran was working some electronics but I just heard piano but that was so good there was nothing lost.  It was a wonderfully intricate and satisfying performance, an improvised mixtape of two tunes (Lynette and Petrochor) with various variations and interplays on the day, minimally planned and open to inspiration.  There was an early buildup, 16 feels, decay to quiet, a 10 feel, some delicious chordal movements moving into two chords in 9, then a floating end with hand plucks on piano strings.  Inspiration might have been hard, given he was playing to a camera in an empty room, but Sean said he preferred that to pre-recording of much the same thing.  There's an edge when you can't redo it, when it's going out as it's played.  As for those electronics, he fiddled them occasionally but I didn't hear them, despite listening on some decent gear.  Maybe they were there in the background, very subtle.  Dunno.  One was a synth; the other a sampler/delay.  But I was transfixed none-the-less.  Host Jeremy suggested influences of Meldau and Keith Jarrett and Sean agreed but they would be influences for any pianist.  He specifically mentioned his teacher in the UK who records on ECM, John Taylor.  Electronics or not, this was up my alley and I was deeply satisfied.

Sean Foran (piano) performed for the Earshift Festival.

Storms of my grandparents

Day 2 of Earshift was Hilary Geddes.  She's a guitarist and composer, now based in Sydney.  Her performance was one of her tunes, When waves move backwards.  It started with soundscapes of tapped strings, then into finger picked arpeggiated chordal passages moving into melody over chords, then gradually more staccato.  She's influenced by that doyen of contemporary guitarists of this style, Bill Frisell.  Host Jeremy mentioned it seemed an evocation of nature or of driving the Australian landscape (which she would have done often enough, originating in Griffith).  She'd written for a small group but was interested in translating to larger groups. Obviously this was not one.  It's actually a work in 3 movements referring to a real experience of a storm while she was camping with her grandmother.  I could understand: our last camping outing ended with a storm that ripped tents and tarps and they were never replaced.  It must be a common-enough experience.  So, meditative guitar with a story for day 2.  Nice.

Hilary Geddes (guitar) performed for the streamed Earshift Festival.

Two eyes, two ears

The Earshift Festival started tonight with Reuben Lewis.  Strangely it conflicted, to the minute, with Sally Greenaway's launch for her latest classical composition/single.  I did manage to catch both, just.  Neither had masses of music, which was an advantage.  I'd caught Sally's tune a few hours earlier on YouTube and it's up for more uninterrupted consideration for 72 hours, so that's to come.  As I write this, it seems that Reuben is still available to replay, so that will definitely be a revisit.  And the Earshift Fest will be around for the next 10 days and I hope to catch it all, or maybe just most.  Sally's was a composition for a chamber group comprising CSO players with spectacular technique playing an exploding latin-styled piece sounding all the world of Piazzola.  It was inspired by the Rio Olympics and explores human achievement, complete with a "mad dash to the finish line".  Drivingly rhythmic, latin melodicism and some great playing.  Loved this one.  Reuben was a huge treat too, but in a massively different way.  I must admit I was taken by the jazz chops and the tech presence of it all.  He played three parts, improvised, with his two doppelgangers appearing behind him: laying down pads on a Prophet 6 synth, on a laptop with Ableton toying with recorded snippets of drums and bass from his band, I hold the lion's paw (this last/second album has just won huge plaudits and national awards), and up front on trumpet with a deskful of effects as the third layer.  He played some startling licks on trumpet, so despite his clear love of the electonics, his more traditional skills were hugely satisfying.  But overall, a triumph.  I can have a personal preference, but that's just a measure of my current interests.  These were two very different streams of two very different musics and cultural awarenesses and I'll happily download a copy of each.  So that's my judgement.  A difficult but hugely satisfying half hour or so with demands for a revisit.

Sally Greenaway presented her latest single composition, Don’t Forget Your Music!  Reuben Lewis appeared as the opening concert of the streamed Earshift Festival, held in association with SIMA.

Hoping

A dedication of love set in cement lays claim to the hope of a generation in the days of failing climate, democracy and equality.  Told in metal, electronics, EDM and even post-modern baroque.

The Pots, my home studio project, has released its fourth album.  Thanks partly to the time afforded by Lockdowns.  Now, The Pots is not jazz, but CJ has expanded to encompass more than just jazz after several thousand posts.  Expect electronica/prog rock with a spoken word and political themes.  Sounds pretty up to date to a kid of several decades back.  Anyway, have a listen.  It's delayed on Spotify, but is on YouTube and a string of other streaming sites, as well as Bandcamp.  Themes for this album include a homage to Greta (Adult in the room), a rant about broken politics, not least ScoMo and his lump of coal presented in Parliament surprisingly recently (Hope%less), a more lighthearted theme with my fave dim synth solo (Ah! PBO), a paean to Gramsci (Wisdom of Gramsci) and baroque, electronica and EDM instrumentals.  All released on the anniversary of the first day of Occupy Wall Street demos in NYC.  Alas, a likely portent for civilisation's future given climate denial, or even just procrastination. 

YouTube > https://tinyurl.com/ym2zj9t5

Bandcamp > https://thepots1.bandcamp.com/

Walkin' (not miles or as in Miles)

I am at a loss without a project during a lockdown (or at the whims of our cute dachies).  So more album/s is/are on the way.  But in the meantime, here's a video for track 1, Pumpkin discomforts, Double down.  Again politics alert, so you have been warned.  This was assembled from a series of videos taken at Parliament House (it fits the topic).  It's not initially as I'd planned, but it works and probably is apt for the anger and dismay at the quality of our politics at the moment.  Have a watch and a listen and expect a new album release this Friday.  From The Pots!

Double Down / The Pots

Lockdowning

Covid lockdowns are good for The Pots, if not for CJ.  You may know that The Pots is my home studio project as Bassist EP.  The Pots have 3 previous albums to their name, all with release dates in 2020, although one was well before lockdowns, on New Year's day.  But the Delta variant has reached Canberra and we have more cases than ever before and we've been in lockdown pretty much from Day 1.  In fact one son and his partner have been in isolation following a Hen's night at Fision nightclub; they were negative and are out now.  But this latest lockdown has allowed me to complete another album that was just mostly just vague thoughts: one track recorded and otherwise just a string of poems/lyrics in store.  The album is Hope / The Pots and due for release in coming weeks.  It's mainly electronica/prog rock with spoken word but there's a final little mediaeval choral work.  It's Ma fin est ma commencement, a crab canon over a palindrome from Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-1377) to which I add a post-modernist overlay.  Amusingly, it reminded me of bickering over climate, forever back and forth, so its presence.  (My albums get warnings for political themes.  Another track is a dedication to Greta.)  The National Capital Orchestra's next concert got cancelled and they called for videos of members' home music projects for their FB site thus this video.  Hope you enjoy it. 

• Ma fin est mon commencement
  

Floored again

Again, a concert of students that was unexpectedly impressive.  I should have learnt by now.  True, there was some youth on show, not least from a Year 6 student, but get into the upper school years, and it was a stunning awareness-raising experience.  Hannah Ni was the Year 6 student.  Not quite so developed, sharp, mature as the teenagers, but hugely impressive playing Kuhlau and Grieg.  I think of my weak take on AMEB 5th grade.  Sad.  I long to hear Hannah in a few years.  Then Year 11, Kenan Zhang, playing Mehul and Sibelius.  Dramatic, revolutionary, majestic.  I loved this playing.  Totally committed; authentically interpretive.  Then to Year 12.  Now this is getting serious, Jennifer Liu, playing Bach and Haydn and Chopin.  More common names.  A huge pleasure, capable, informed, mature, even seasoned if you can say that of a teenager.  I think of motley performances and shrink.  But they have a good teacher, obviously.  They come from the studio of Elena Nikulina, award winning AMEB teacher and accompanist and a graduate of the Donetsk S Prokofyev State Conservatory in the Ukraine.  They know their artistic stuff in those areas.  And what else?  They all played from memory.  Yes, all performers and, yes, all pieces.  And I heard a few lost bars but they were recovered with aplomb and they had been prepared for it.  All part of this immensely impressive teaching and its students.  A thing of joy and awe.

Hannah Ni, Kenan Zhang and Jennifer Li (piano) performed at Wesley.  Hannah, Kenan and Jennifer are all students from the studio of Elena Nikulina (piano teacher).

The seduction of brass

Perhaps seduction is not a think to consider as you watch an army band in uniform, khaki, stripes and the rest, but close your eyes and listen and the professional chops and bell-like clarity of the brass is obvious.  And you wouldn't start a seduction with Wagner, either, especially a funeral march, but it was a work of delicious wonder, to lead into a varied program from training dragons through to jazzy doo-dah from Stephen Foster and that infectious tune Brazil and some inescapable (and ever welcome) Bach and a combination from the authentic religious brass of the Salvos.  I used to see them occasionally in the suburban streets, marching their beliefs in 4/4.  There was variation of combinations, too, in this concert.  Three big works with mostly all the performers and four smaller works, each for a quartet of an instrument: trumpets on Bach; horns or Dragons; trombones on that jazzy Doo-dah suite; euphos and tubas on Brazil.  It all worked a treat.  Fun or lively, serious or serene or funereal, these were immensely beauteous tones, soft and rich and loud, well intoned and tongued.  Just a huge pleasure.  I must get to the RMC band again in future.  They play pretty regularly and cheaply for the public, at Canberra Theatre or Llewellyn, symphonic or concert or brass band, proceeds to charity, and those uniforms and always that satisfying professionalism.

The Royal Military College Band Brass Group played at Wesley Church under Major Darren Cole (CO, MD) and Cpl Justin Lingard (Conductor).