Craig Scott Quintet

A quick run around to Jazz on Ovens (which a little confusingly now needs to be entered from Ryley Street instead of the other one and is not terribly well signposted...) to hear the last tune played by the Craig Scott Quintet. I've only heard Craig's playing in Judy Bailey's trio before and have loved the way he interacts in that context. Today, we heard a swinging, jazzy quintet. The driving rhythm was energising - and a punter whose opinion I respect agreed with me (in fact she said it first!) Paul Cutlan on saxophones, Tim Fisher on piano, Tim Firth (love his work!) on drums and Warwick Alder on trumpet. I want to hear them again, for more than one tune! Maybe next time...

Sam Keevers Nonet

I last heard this band at Stonnington in May with some substitutions. Today the (as advertised) lineup was Sam on piano, Scott Tinkler with trumpet, Jordan Murray (trombone), Bernie McGann (alto), Jamie Oehlers (tenor), Stephen Magnusson (guitar), Des White (bass), Simon Barker (drums) and Javier Fredes (percussion).

First tune was 'Compassion Compression', Keevers' 'protest song about absence of compassion'.

'Simple Pleasures' followed, dedicated to Ella the genius Border Collie who has since passed on. The tune featured Jordan Murray on the trombone, Bernie McGann's Alto's dark voice, and Stephen Magnusson in a solo that made the unrufflable (is that a word) Scott Tinkler sit up an take notice, mouthing 'wow' across at Stephen (tho' it may have been an expletive. I couldn't tell from where I was sitting!!

I felt something well up. Later in the evening Paul Grabowsky mentioned that those who play improvised music and we who listen to it are lucky - it provides a release for emotions that can otherwise become toxic, if held on to. I suppose he means it provides a process for working through something. I really sensed that something was being worked through.

This was a song full of swinging sweet sadnesses. I felt it, other listeners felt it and I heard from Scott later that they were definitely feeling it on stage.

Sam Keevers has that way with music anyway, and the particular sensibilities and circumstances at play in St Pats this afternoon must have converged to give an already great band that extra something special...

Here's a picture of Sam that I lifted from this article in The Age from a couple of years ago. Can't find a photo of the nonet anywhere! I'm going to have to start getting brave and taking shots in gigs. Wish me luck!

But shouldn't there be a pic of the nonet in the media material provided by (to) the festival. Eh?

Water

Little changes in our world. The Rural City of Wangaratta is feeling the drought, no doubt. It's closer here than in the cities, harder to ignore. I notice that at least one local restaurant has decided to sell bottled water instead of providing free tap water on the tables. It may just be a way of maximising profit, but it feels like a sign of things to come.

Megan Washington & Paul Grabowksy Sextet

You know how I said about the way my window faces out onto the Jazz Marquee? Well, this afternoon, I heard a siren call. Megan Washington. I'd heard her and the band warming up (between the thwock, thwock, thwock) and then the music started. Halfway through the concert I was down there lining up to be let in at the end of the next song.

Paul Grabowsky's Sextet is himself, Niko Schauble on drums, Sam Anning's bass, Jamie Oehlers on tenor sax, Shannon Barnett on trombone and Stephen Magnusson on guitar. Megan has a beautiful voice that seems fragile yet tenacious. Notes hold clearly. I personally like her lyrics too. She gets words to flow so that they don't seem forced into line, to meet the needs of a song. A facility with poetry that is rare enough in songwriting to be very welcome when it shows itself.

And then in the middle of a piece called 'Poetry' we were treated to a blast from Jamie, Shannon and Stephen in particular that energised the room. All the programmes being used as fans in the marqueesped up (yup it's warm in there on a 28 degree day!). People looked at each other, sat forward and we were off!

David Murray Black Saints Quartet

10:45 on Friday night was when the music really began for me at this festival. I'd been to the Ilmiliekki Quartet at 9:15 but I was still thinking about the launch so my ears were closed. A couple of songs in, I left and had some dinner. Sometimes you just have to do that at Wang.

So at 10:45 I toddled down to the marquee to hear David Murray Black Saint Quartet. I took notes and they're not terribly legible the next day. I know I was tired because I kept thinking about how I should get a shot for the blog, with my little camera and was kicking myself for not bringing the camera, but of course it was with me, in my bag.

Anyhoo...

David Murray is described in the programme as 'one of the most important and accomplished saxophonists in the last three decades in jazz'. Gerry Koster, who emceed the event, said much the same thing, using slightly different words. All very good, but what I cared about was the next hour and a half of music. I was tired, but I was ready. Because after all, I was in Wangaratta!

Legible sections of my notes tell me that the first tune he played was 'Waltzing Again', dedicated to his father and something to do with Cuba.

The next song, 'Kiama for Obama' had the first three rows of audience (the reserved seats, nicely separated from those of us who take pot luck) moving as one. I had a sense of a large energy, I was so tired that sysaesthesia was kicking in. I saw the blue ocean, less fluid, more powerful and moving moving constantly. A beautiful tune. Oh, and Kiama is not pronounced as we do here, for the town with the blowhole in NSW, no indeedy. It's Key-arma. Which makes Kiama for Obama a nice ring, too! 'Our Man in Washington' as David Murray called him. There was a latin feel to this and we saw a hint of it as Murray walked away from microphone after announcing the song, with a little shimmy of the hips. 'Aha', I thought. We're in for some movin' music.

And then a tune called 'Banished'. Writen for a documentary about racism in America. The piece featured bassist Jaribu Shahid, bowing the bass. He was constantly adjusting his strings between bowing which must have been tricky. But what he produced was a range of soulful sounds that sang and roared, growling deeply from the bass. Then the bowing of the bass and Myrray's bass clarinet joined in a mournful cry

And then the highlight of the evening for me, and for others who have given me their punteresque opinions since was the song called 'When the Monarchs Come to Town' dedicated to Satchel Paige, a famous member of the Monarchs baseball team. It only struck me later that all through the concert Murray had been making strong references to racial issues, which are at the core of his music. And I was just listening to the sounds. Having just read John Shand's book Jazz: The Australian Accent I am a tad sensitised to the differences that may or may not exist between music that comes from Australia and music that doesn't... It became crystal clear for me last night that this is a big difference. Jazz in Australia is not the music of protest, or the music we use to cry out against racial injustices, at least not in the same way is it is associated with those causes in the USA. That's a real 'yes, obviously' thing to say, I know but you know when you have knowledge in your head and there's a moment sometimes where it shifts into a deeper kind of knowledge. I guess I was just having one of those shifts.

Back to the music. For 'When the Monarchs Come to Town', Murray again played his bass clarinet. A beautiful instrument - one of my favourite sounds. Tiredness and the disconnect of reason that it sometimes brings had definitely kicked in. He played the instrument with a percussive sound. A melodic tapping that he used to carry the tune. Enthralling sound. The sort of thing you'd expect for a few notes, but he carried the whole tune on it. And then occasional little shrieks and squeaks seemed to excape. At this point i was picturing a parrot of some sort, embodied in the clarinet, and wanting its voice to be heard. A little shriek here, a little shriek there. And then more and more strident until this bird was singing and squawking and the whole tent was thumping its feet. The piano (Lafayette Gilchrist) bass (Jaribu Shahid) and drums (Malik Washington) were on fire. And gradually the bird was satisfied that it had said its thing and subsided and back we were to the mellow bass clarinet. A beautiful thing. The song left me breathless.

A final tune, Murray Steps. Introduced thusly: "We got tired of playing 'Giant Steps' because it was too hard, so I wrote this and it was even harder." Murray thanked Coltrane for bringing spirituality and dexterity to the music. We all admired his own dexterity!

Later, at the merchandising tent where fans were lining up to have their CDs signed (as you do) Lafayette Gilchrist, pictured here at the launch -where he had been equally dexterous with cheese, crackers and wine all successfully juggled and consumed while being a very able conversationalist - said of being in Murray's quartet. "We just wait and see what he wants to do, and we go there. Every concert's different and we don't know what's going to happen." So maybe I should go to the one this afternoon as well...

Re-arrangement

Wangaratta is getting itself a new performing arts space, but these things take time so there's currently a construction site where the old Town Hall venue was, and a temporary main stage fashioned from a very large Marquee in Merriwa Park... that's the park down to your right as you come into the first roundabout of the main shopping street in Wangaratta. Quite a few Wang regulars were wondering how the venue would be, but it seems to be working well. I've even heard a couple of punters say that they think it should be like this permanently! Must remember to take pics next time I'm down there... I can show you what it looks like.

At the motel, I have a room facing the park so as I sit here typing, if there's any music on in the marquee, I can hear it. I can also hear the tennis. Thwock. Thwock. Thwock. And the odd announcement. "Congratulations to Amy and Kristen for their playing today" (tennis, not saxophone) "If you're still here, come up - we've got a prize for you." Thwock. Thwock. Thwock. "Don't forget everybody, we've got some music for you here today, at great expense to the management. You might play better than usual, if you can just catch the rythm." That's true! Someone actually said that!

Launching extempore

Without apology, I start the Wang blog with the launch of extempore, the journal of arts and writing with content that is 'about, inspired by and responding to jazz and improvised music'... it's been a major project for the past year or more and it was launched on Friday 31 October at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz. Yaay! We had commandeered the supper room beside St Patrick's hall, one of the major venues of the festival. Normally this room is used for feeding the sound guys... it adjoins a fully-fitted kitchen where meals are prepared daily for the discreet people in black who make the sound possible...

A simple launch formula - plenty of cool guests (Andra Jackson, journalist, Adrian Jackson, Artistic Director of the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Lafayette Gilchrist, piano player with David Murray Black Saints Quartet) some drinks (supplied by Baddaginnie Run) and nibbles and mingling followed by a notable personage doing a launch speech, a reading or two by contributors and then a big thank you and hurrah! We officially exist. Our notable personage for the evening was the wonderful Mike Nock, jazz icon and chief judge at the finals of the National Jazz Awards each year at the festival. We were treated to a reading of 'Coffee with Miles' by Geoff Page and 'Quintet' by Lynn Hard.

Pictured at right, Geoff Page, Mike Nock and Yours Truly.

The highlight of the launch had to be John Clare's performance of three short excerpts from his piece 'Rock and Roll Diary of a Jazz Musician' (pictured below

Here are some more pics of our happy event:

Cheese by the Milawa Cheese Factory and wines by Baddaginnie Run

Gerry Koster (Jazz Up Late on ABC Classic FM) and Henk van Leeuwen (Australia Northern Europe Liaisons). Also visible, Adrian Jackson, John Shand (his new book Jazz: The Australian Accent being launched this weekend) Jane March (her photographs appear in John's book), and Peter Riechniewski (Sydney Improvised Music Association)