A top 10 is a little like a star rating — how can diverse albums be assessed against each other according to some sort of merit test? But I’ve been happy over the past few years to prepare such a list for the Sunday Herald Sun‘s Play liftout because it is another way for people to hear about albums they may like to buy and enjoy. Reviewers were given 20 words in which to describe each album.

I chose from albums I’d reviewed during the year, and some I have not reviewed yet. The main test I applied for this top 10 was to ask myself which albums I had played most.

1. Sandy Evans

When the Sky Cries Rainbows

Evans’ suite expresses love and hope amidst suffering in this inspirational journey evoking life’s myriad hues and states of mind.

2. Luke Howard, Janos Bruneel

Open Road

Belgian Bruneel’s warm, muscular bass complements the pure, cool and often pensive Howard, drawing out the pianist’s brooding power.

3. Tim Stevens Trio

Scare Quotes

Textures are tangible, timbres and tempos vary as the trio’s ability to build tension and hold our attention never wavers.

4. Browne, Hannaford, Anning

Shreveport Stomp

Superbly creative and uncompromising modern jazz that dips its lid to Monk, Parker, Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and Ornette Coleman.

5. Origami

The Blues of Joy

Dreamy, slow openers unfold to playful verve, then darkly tense and restless, edgy pieces exploring timbre, dynamics and saxophone versatility.

6. Inside Out

In Cahoots

Marc Hannaford’s pianistic mastery matches the mellow musings, larrikin playfulness and shimmying, soaring and blazing sinuosity of Paul Williamson’s trumpet.

7. The Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra

Kristin Berardi Meets the Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra

The ensemble’s subtlety, control and empathy give Berardi space to weave her evocative, finely crafted vocals between layers of instrumentation.

8. The Andrew Dickeson Quintet

Weaver of Dreams

In his debut as leader, drummer Dickeson arranges classic tunes and a swinging line-up to deliver them to a live audience.

9. Nick Haywood Quartet

1234

Simple tunes develop complexity in the hands of this quartet, guided by bassist Haywood with a commitment to collaborative spontaneity.

10. Leigh Barker

The New Sheiks

Turn your home into a gig with this lively, warm, irresistibly toe-tapping ensemble’s take on good old blues-infused jazz.

Ananke performs at La Mama Theatre in 2006 (Picture supplied)

Nick Tsiavos — Contrabass
Anthony Schulz — Piano accordion
Achilles Yiangoulli — six-string bouzouki

Tonight the three members of Ananke will mark the release of their eponymous sixth album with a performance at the MRC Salon. They have likened their playing to surfing, with each player waiting for the right wave and then negotiating pathways amid the turbulence while maintaining contact with each other.

Visit Ananke’s website for more information about this trio.

Here are some excerpts, in their own words, about the band:

“Ananke make music at the crossroads of many cultures, creating a new musical language that expresses the restless energy of the Mediterranean. From lands touched by tragedy and displacement comes the bittersweet sound of Ananke.

“Aria-award-winning musicians Achilles Yiangoulli and Anthony Schulz, with critically acclaimed bassist Nick Tsiavos continue on their explorations culminating in the release of their sixth CD, ‘Ananke’.

“The trio has always been an execution of a ‘leap of faith’ when creating this sound world. We discard the expected functional roles of our instruments and familiar musical structures, and instead, look for resonance and narratives within the moment.

“In a manner very similar to ‘surfing’, we three paddle out to sea then wait, bobbing up and down in the swell ‘til a suitable wave arrives — then, it gets complex. As the surge propels you along, you try to negotiate pathways for yourself while at the same time maintaining a dialogue of sorts with the other two. You continually search for moments of self expression, yet are always looking for ways to interact with and respond to the other members, and this is all happening while the ‘wave’ is surging under you, constantly changing direction and intensity.

“I suppose, when things are working, we get into a state some people call ‘flow’. There is no real conscious awareness in performance, but the sub conscious is working over time.

“And, at the end of the day, we three are all romantics and much of our aesthetic lies in the land of bittersweet.”

This concert will be something special.

ROGER MITCHELL

3.5 stars

Savoy Jazz

Angst is not something associated with guitar maestro Bill Frisell, so when his quintet of violinist Jenny Scheinman, pedal steel and acoustic guitarist Greg Leisz, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen tackles John Lennon’s pain-filled Mother, it’s not quite as dark as the original with lyrics.

Frisell’s band bares the compositional bones of 16 Lennon songs (seven with McCartney) and weaves its colourful magic thereon, often catching the spirit of the originals while wrapping them differently.

Familiar melodies and harmonies can take a while to drift in amidst the swirl and swell of strings, while others are immediately recognisable. Give Peace a Chance is strangely surreal.

Frisell’s light embroidery reveals the essence of these tunes.

Download: Mother, Across the Universe
File between: John Lennon, Pat Metheny

ROGER MITCHELL

This review also appeared in the Play section of the Sunday Herald Sun on December 4, 2011

Andrea Keller performs with her quartet at the Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre in April.

It’s been a busy time for award-winning pianist/composer Andrea Keller lately. On Sunday and Monday last week the Bennetts Lane Big Band performed one of her compositions (along with one by quartet member Eugene Ball, a horn player also well known as a composer). Then, on Tuesday, Keller played with the Women’s Festival Sextet at Bennetts Lane.

Flinders Quartet, apparently enjoying a brief respite from busking at Southbank.

But Keller has other strings to her bow, terrible pun intended. She will be back at the Lane on Sunday night with her quartet, and this time also with members of Flinders String Quartet: Erica Kennedy and Matthew Tomkins on violin, Helen Ireland on viola and Zoë Knighton on cello.

Keller and longtime collaborators Ball, Ian Whitehurst (tenor saxophone) and Joe Talia (drums) were nominated for Jazz Ensemble of the Year at the 2011 Bell Awards.

This concert, supported by the Melbourne Jazz Co-operative, will feature music from Keller’s 60-minute work Place, which draws inspiration from the area surrounding Bermagui, NSW, and explores notions of identity and belonging. The quartets will also perform new arrangements of other works for strings.

Keller’s commissioned work, Place, came into being after Genevieve Lacey, director of the Four Winds Festival held at Bermagui in NSW, asked the pianist/composer to write a larger work inspired by the concept of place. Some time after Keller had agreed, she was invited to spend a few days Bermagui in the hope that this would create a link to the work. Keller was offered the chance to utilise a string quartet.

When Place was performed (with a different string ensemble and with Niko Schauble sitting in for Joe Talia) at the Melbourne Recital Centre in April to open the Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival,  I was so enthralled and captivated I decided not to attempt describing the piece. It was just wonderful to sit and experience what the two quartet provided.

I wrote only this: “To put Place in a context, it brought to mind the Allan Browne Quintet‘s The Drunken Boat and the works of Maria Schneider. There was an unfolding or evolving and many changes of mood signalled by the shifts in texture, timbre and pace. There were restive periods of spiky percussiveness, wonderfully breathy contributions from Ball (on pocket trumpet and silver-foil-wrapped trumpet) and Whitehurst and lots of space for expectation to build. The resonance of the cello was beautifully used. Schauble was, as always, able to intervene with finesse and never to intrude.”

Where else could you find two quartets performing original works for only $15?

ROGER MITCHELL

Saxophonist Martha Baartz is back at Bennetts Lane on Tuesday.

There is no Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival this year, unfortunately, but there will an all-female sextet playing original material at Bennetts Lane on Tuesday.

Since 2000, the MWIJF has sought to form a sextet each year of leading female musicians to perform and promote their material. This year the sextet’s core rhythm section members Andrea Keller (piano) Tamara Murphy (bass) and Sonja Horbelt (drums) are joined again by NSW-based alto saxophonist Martha Baartz, who used to live in Melbourne, together with Gian Slater (vocals) and Fran Swinn (guitar).

The last time we heard Baartz back in Melbourne it was a real hoot, and there is every reason to believe this performance also will have a really great vibe and be a showcase of Australian women’s jazz talent. This sextet is brimming with talent, so rock up and enjoy.

Don’t miss it!

ROGER MITCHELL

(Parenthèses Records)

3 stars

Peter Knight on trumpet, cornet, prepared piano, voice, laptop electronics, real-time processing
Dung Nguyen on dan tranh, prepared dan tranh, dan bau, modified electric guitar

Fans of the successful and popular jazz ensemble Way Out West, of which Knight and Nguyen are members, may find this album a shock to the system. Knight’s performances with solo trumpet and laptop would be a better preparation for this excursion into new music.

Parentheses Records’ website has links to a number of reviews, some quite long, and an article by Knight in the Australian Music Centre’s Resonate Magazine.

I think one difficulty in assessing this music is that the intention to detail of the creators and the subtleties of the end product may be quite separate from what is perceived by the listener. Another is the perennial tension between giving a description of any music (in order to give the reader an idea of what to expect) and the need, in a review, to critically appraise or assess how well it works.

There is no simple solution to these issues, and raising them is probably a stalling tactic. So, on with my succinct review. Residual is at times filled with brooding, building intensity (as in the opening, title track) and at others (as in Travelling) makes an excursion into quite strong, even abrasive, rhythmic patterns that also gather potency over time. Minky Star swells and pulsates with sonic textures suggestive of a living, breathing organism that may be experiencing a variety of physical or emotional states, many of them unsettling. The pulsating effect is texturally grating and mesmeric, rather than necessarily pleasant. Phase Pedal is dominated by increasingly insistent percussion, behind which are prolonged or stretched notes which complement, but never come into the foreground.

In the final track of this relatively short rendition of Knight’s compositions, Autumn Music, we are treated to the flute-like sound of a trumpet played without the mouthpiece and the shimmering, bending notes of Dung’s single-stringed dan bau. It is the most immediately appealing piece on the CD, possibly because it has more in common with some of Dung’s contributions to tracks from Way Out West’s albums in which he demonstrates his virtuosity on traditional Vietnamese instruments.

Does it work? Yes, but within the confines of music that is exploratory, challenging and compelling rather than in any way swinging, toe-tapping or melodic. It definitely has the tension which is often important to command attention, but it is “serious” rather than “fun” music. There are hints of jazz and of Asia, but this is taking a new direction.

ROGER MITCHELL

3.5 stars (but it’s really a 3.8 or 3.9)

Bassist Nick Haywood leads this superb quartet from behind, with a clear commitment to collaboration and spontaneity.

The group is well chosen. Guitarist Stephen Magnusson’s spare interventions intersect artfully with Colin Hopkins’ dynamically rich piano contributions, and Allan Browne’s drumming is always apt.

As Haywood intended, simple tunes develop complexity in the hands of this quartet, with exquisite renditions of The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress and Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain sure to test anyone’s addiction to vocals.

From the dreamy Tahdon to the ebullient Round Trip, this outing is testament to what can be achieved by giving capable musicians a push and seeing where they take us.

Count 1234 as a success.

Download: Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

File between: Charlie Haden, Pat Metheny

ROGER MITCHELL

This review appeared also in the Play section of the Sunday Herald Sun newspaper, Melbourne, on November 20, 2011.

Rob Burke plays Bennetts Lane

When Robert Burke, Tony Gould, Nick Haywood and Tony Floyd launch their album Live At Bennetts Lane (Jazzhead) this week by playing live at Bennetts Lane, one member of the quartet will be studying their performance closely.

Bassist Haywood, who with his newly formed quartet of Colin Hopkins on piano, Stephen Magnusson on guitar and Allan Browne on drums recently released the album 1234, is making a comparison of these two bands as part of his studies for a PhD.

The key difference between the two groups is time spent playing together as a band — the combo of Burke, Gould, Haywood and Floyd have had 15 years to get to know each other’s work in the quartet. It will be fascinating to see what emerges from Haywood’s participant-observation research.

Tony Gould (image supplied)

There is an academic flavour to the quartet that Burke says has matured over its years of playing at Bennetts Lane. Burke is Head of the School of Music and Coordinator of Jazz and Popular Studies at Monash University. Gould, who until 2005 was Head (Dean) of and Associate Professor at the School of Music, Victorian College of the Arts, will take up a teaching post at Monash University in 2012. Haywood is Head of Program and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at NMIT. Floyd works as a sessional teacher at the Victoria College of Arts and Monash University.

But the music for Tuesday’s CD launch, culled by Burke from his recordings taken over three years of the band’s live performances at Bennetts Lane, is likely to be anything but academic or formal.

Burke says quartet members do not rehearse, but arrive at the gig early to go through the tunes.

“The tunes develop. But we are improvisers. The compositions are just merely guides and in some tunes we don’t get to the melody for five or six minutes. In All of You, the melody comes in at the eight-minute mark. It’s really in the moment.”

Participant observation: Nick Haywood at Wangaratta Jazz & Blues Festival 2011

On the new album the quartet plays two standards, Cole Porter’s All of You and Easy To Remember (Hart/Rodgers), traditional tune Charukeshi, Tahdon by Finnish saxophonist Jukka Perko and two pieces by Burke entitled Pointilism and Yashanmali (after his three daughters).

Burke describes Pointilism as a straight-ahead tune. “The chords are quite diatonic, so it makes a lot of sense. Everything’s in staccato and it develops from there. It’s not crazy stuff, but it is free.”

Burke says the quartet tries to avoid taking a formulaic approach to  improvisation. “It’s not that interesting to the other members of the ensemble if somebody’s playing 10 chords of their own licks which are somebody else’s. So if we’re playing a standard we’ll be playing within the harmony, but moving away from playing somebody else’s solos. It’s about the group improvisation.

“We don’t plan this. It’s the way we hear music and we’ve evolved as a group. That sort of rapport only happens over time.”

The quartet has had plenty of time to build rapport. Burke was 15 when he met Gould,  who was taking classes at the University of Melbourne.

“It was a different time then, when there weren’t really jazz clubs and people weren’t really jazz musicians,” Burke says. “There was jazz in the sixties, but people’s main jobs were in television and the theatre — the Frank Smiths and Graeme Lyalls. Don Burrows would be doing a TV documentary while he was doing his gigs.”

Tony Floyd on drums at Bennetts Lane, but with a different band.

Burke met Floyd, along with Doug de Vries and Jex Saarelaht, in the 1980s when music educator Jamie Aebersold came to Australia. He met Nick at the VCA and quartet members had some gigs from 1983 when Martin Jackson formed the Melbourne Jazz Cooperative. But they did not start playing together as a group until 1996.

Burke says this is not traditional mainstream jazz.

“We don’t play what I call eighth note jazz, which is what you have when the bassist is doing a walking bass. It’s more open.

“We do have jazz tradition. We’ve listened to all the greats and transcribed them and we have influences from all those people, but we’ve moved on from that. There are influences from every type of music. If you listen to Tony Gould, he sounds like Ravel and Debussy.”

ROGER MITCHELL

What next? Barney McAll, Jamie Oehlers, Josh Roseman and Chris Hale

Sunday at Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival brought the opportunity to revisit and reflect, as well as to hear a moving suite performed live, and something well out of left field involving a choir and two pianos.

The day’s lesson came early, but not at the jazz mass featuring Leigh Barker’s New Sheiks. One festival soon I will make it to Holy Trinity Cathedral for that service. No, the lesson to which I refer is that no concert — especially if it involves overseas artists — should be assumed to be a carbon copy of one delivered by the same band the night before.

Of course, that can happen. Sunday ended with Linda Oh Quartet playing much the same material, albeit in slightly different order, as it had in the opening concert. That was a little disappointing and, coupled with the fact that band and audience were tired, may have contributed to an outing that lacked some pizzazz.

But for 11am Sunday, in what would usually be a tougher timeslot than the gig which closed Saturday night’s proceedings, Josh Roseman decided to add to his band’s line-up, bringing in Chris Hale on electric bass guitar and Jamie Oehlers on tenor sax.

Joining the Unit: Chris Hale sits in at Wangaratta.

I’m not sure whether these two made the difference, but Sunday morning’s seemed to be the Unit’s best outing in the festival.

Not that Saturday night’s concert was at all lacklustre. There’s a lot going on in this band, but it is subtle and perhaps somewhat camouflaged by Roseman’s looseness and wit. I suspect he is closely monitoring every nuance, but doesn’t let that show. The night gig lasted almost two hours, opening with the sonically luscious and rhythmically rich Regression, then the brief and gentle layerings of Fortunato, which explored the rich trombone timbre, followed by some of The Suite — a work commissioned by SFJazz — that successively brought to mind Gest8, Ari Hoenig Quartet and Jimmy Smith as I listened with a smile on my face. Roseman, amid his banter, referred to having “an opportunity to redefine voices” and that seemed to make sense in The Suite as his input on ’bone seemed soft, warm and cuddly.

Still in Saturday’s concert, the Unit played a piece by one of Rosman’s idols, Don Drummond, entitled Thoroughfare (“Help me, Don”, Roseman said a couple of times, in a prayer of sorts), Sedate Remix — a surreal, calm piece in which we could have been in a church for a start and later somewhere out there with Sun Ra — and finally Theme, Motormouth and Swartz, named after a fictional legal firm, with some pretty special special effects from Barney McAll and Peter Apfelbaum.

Fine tuning: Josh Roseman makes some in-flight adjustments.

Having revisited that concert, and realised there was a lot to it, I’d still have to say the next morning brought us something more special. It’s hard to say why, except that this had less banter and a more serious feel. After the Bob Marley tune Crazy Baldheads came Blues for Austria, a toe-tapping piece, which I loved, that opened and closed with muted horns and included great drum work by Ted Poor. The Swamp Tune again ventured into the surreal, with Oehlers allegedly playing only one note, Apfelbaum very effective on Korg and Roseman adding some tiny touches of fine tuning. Suddenly, at Roseman’s direction, drums, horns and all manner of keyboards kicked in for a rollicking finish.

The concert finished with the title track from Treats for the Nightwalker. Roseman is an intriguing individual and I look forward to seeing where he ventures in musical experimentation, along with the madcap Barney McAll. If a trombone solo recording eventuates, I’d like to hear that.

As for the moving suite performed live, and something well out of left field involving a choir and two pianos, the next post will tell all.

Note: Pictures will be added gradually.

Moving partnership: Paul Grabowsky and Sandy Evans

Radio DJs used to spruik their wares with the words “recorded live”, which always seemed an oxymoron. If I say music grips me most if it’s “created live” that is similarly nonsensical in one sense, so to speak, but nevertheless has meaning. Imagine being with a band as a song is born and you may get my drift. It would be exciting.

The prospect of more than 12 hours of almost non-stop music performed by local and international musicians on day two of the 2011 Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival was exciting. But which gigs would be memorable highlights?

Of course it’s subjective. For example, I walked into St Patrick’s Hall to sample Thirsty Merc singer, guitarist and keyboard player Rai Thistlewayte in a rare solo concert, waited for far too few minutes to be fair to him before departing. It wasn’t my cup of tea. Those who stayed, I’m told, were absolutely wowed by Thistlewayte’s talent as vocalist, pianist and entertainer. They loved him.

Earlier, when Barre Phillips performed a solo bass set in the magnificent setting of the Holy Trinity Cathedral, I was surprised to see members of the audience streaming towards the door each time there was a break in his playing. It was not their cup of tea.

Three concerts emerged as highlights for me on Saturday — two completely composed on the run and two bringing together duos in noteworthy collaborations. One fitted both categories.

In 2008, when the festival had to erect elaborate marquees to replace venues lost to make way for the new Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre, Lost and Found — pianist/composer Paul Grabowsky, saxophonist Jamie Oehlers and drummer Dave Beck — treated us to an hour of spontaneous composition that was riveting and inspired. The trio did it again on Saturday at 11am in the WPAC Theatre, in an expressive, captivating and creative outpouring that made me realise how much I love being able to watch truly live music. This was thrilling. We were seeing, and hearing, a work evolve in real time.

I am fascinated by how these three achieve the structure, coherence and degree of assurance in their work, which never seems to waver. The piece was alternately building and waning in intensity as Grabowsky, Oehlers and Beck at times each appeared to do their own thing, but were each always in a state of alertness, listening and responding. Grabowsky would contribute a quick chord that spiked into the narrative, starting something that took the players in a new direction. Later, the piano evoked bell chimes as the intensity subsided, leaving only fluid, liquid sax.

There was suspense in this thriller, the trio keeping us waiting and creating a sense of expectation that kept us engrossed. Grabowsky’s playing created the space to feed this audience anticipation. Beck’s contributions were always in tune with the changing moods. I had another concert to get to, but could not leave. I had to wait until the end.

At 5pm Saturday, also in the WPAC Theatre, bassist Barre Phillips reunited with pianist Mike Nock, with whom he had played years ago in New York, for another engrossing concert of music created in the moment. Their encounter began as a light-hearted competition to see who could be more minimalist, then grew more serious.

To me, this — as did Lost and Found — captured the essence of jazz’s essential appeal: the excitement of what might happen next, always present in any improvisation, but more purely expressed in these totally unscripted encounters. Between Phillips and Nock there was tension. There was also delicacy, space and patience, exceptional clarity, sparseness and an artist’s palette of dynamics and timbre. There was rhythmic warfare, or at least a skirmish or two, before glorious congruence. It was a symphony, if at times an agitated one, with the players prompting the audience to wonder “What will each intervention produce?” and “Will it completely change the mood?”

At one point Phillips was clawing his fingers up the strings, his double bass weeping. Nock’s response was a grumbling and growling piano. And until the end of this engrossing encounter, both were ever attentive, ever watchful.

Before waxing lyrical on the third of the day’s highlights, I will mention Barre Phillips’ solo bass concert in Holy Trinity Cathedral at noon. I had hoped to hear lots of bowed bass from the maestro, but after his first piece he delivered a cornucopia of techniques — all we ever imagined could be done with an upright bass, but were afraid to ask.

He strummed close to the neck and down beside the bridge, he slapped the wood, he played pizzicato on the upper strings, he cut the heel of his hand into the strings and slid it down, he tapped strings with the bow handle and slid it down a little (delicacy) and a lot (drama), he rubbed the bow handle against the edges of the f-hole, in circles over the bass body and strings, he tapped the bow stick against the bridge and the end of its handle on the strings and he rattled the bow against the back of the stem and top of the instrument’s body.

In the penultimate piece, Phillips produced peaceful, calming sounds, letting the sound of strummed strings reverberate in the vaulted cathedral space. In the last, his moth-like fluttering hand gave way to fast strumming as the piece built and subsided.

It was an amazing exhibition of technique. Yet it did not move or engage me in the way that Phillips’ encounter with Nock would do later that day. Perhaps it lacked a sense of tension and development or evolution.

The third highlight of the day was the pairing of Paul Grabowsky on piano with Sandy Evans on saxophones. These two consummate musicians had never performed together as a duo before.

It was fitting that they included three tracks from Grabowsky’s Love’s Calendar suite on his Hush Collection album (with the late Gary Costello on bass and Andrew Gander on drums) for the children’s hospitals — born out of the pianist’s wish to give something back after his son Guy’s treatment for a serious illness in 2004. Evans’ latest album, When the Sky Cries Rainbows, is a response to her musician husband Tony Gorman’s illness.

Their set opened and closed with April. In between they played September, Mountview (Evans), I Want to Talk About You (standard), Heartbeat (Evans) and March.

There was no sentimentality. To me this felt like a journey through life taken by longtime and very close friends who delight in each other’s company and still have plenty to say to each other, at times engaging in vigorous debate. It was also balm for the soul, because parts of this memorable exchange were so beautiful.

Just one notch down from these highlights of Saturday were performances by the Fabian Almazan Trio, Les Society Des Antipodes, Gian Slater and Linda Oh, and the Josh Roseman Unit. Perhaps it’s best to add another post about these.

ROGER MITCHELL

Note: Pictures will be added gradually.