REVIEW
Melbourne International Jazz Festival, 17 – 26 October 2025
The night after this year’s MIJF I went to a concert. A jazz gig. There was an international vocalist, albeit an expat, visiting from Switzerland. The other musicians had been on stage during the festival. It was a sublime experience.
It showed how well the improvised music Melbourne had been blessed with over the 10 days from 17 October had succeeded in drawing us in, sustaining us and providing transformative experiences.
I still wanted more music after attending 14 festival concerts, despite also fitting in a 45km bike ride on the Great Ocean Road and an all-day workshop on how to control varroa mite in beehives.
I could not miss the opportunity, on the Monday post festival, to hear visiting vocalist Kristin Berardi perform with Andrea Keller on piano, Sam Anning on bass and Theo Carbo on drums. It was exquisite. It was also an example of the quality of music available in Melbourne’s jazz venues outside festival time.
Festivals are wonderful. They bring a real buzz. They have sold-out concerts – there were many at this year’s MIJF – and enthusiastic crowds. (Where are these fans at other times of the year? It’s a perennial, but unanswered question.)
It’s tempting to second guess our choices when there are so many great gigs on offer. In conversations before and after the music, fans ask each other, “What have you seen? What’s your highlight so far?”
I kept hearing about concerts that I missed. Fem Belling’s The Hormesis Project was wonderful. The Italian Festa Jazz Club outings were so good. Nat Bartsch’s work Acceptance Does Not Mean Surrender at Monash was moving. Rita Marcotulli at Chapel Off Chapel was superb. So were the two concerts at that venue showcasing artists on Jeremy Rose’s Earshift label. Barney McAll’s outing at 170 Russell St with Gary Bartz was energy-filled and fabulous. Ibrahim Maalouf and his 10-piece band sporting six trumpets was a hit. Gregory Porter at Hamer Hall was a favourite for a festival volunteer, until he heard Hiromi in The Piano Quintet at Hamer Hall. Lettuce at 170 Russell St was tastier than expected. Phil Turcio’s The Outernet at The Jazzlab was fantastic. I could go on, but you get the picture.
My festival opened on a high when Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez joined nine Melbourne Conservatorium of Music students at The Jazzlab for Masters and Apprentices. Brett Williams had rehearsed the band well and Perez picked up on their eagerness to tackle exciting pieces – Suite for the Americas, Across the Crystal Sea (with muted horns), Galactic Panama and Lumen.
Perez was perfect in the leader’s role, attentive, enthused and involved. After only a day’s rehearsal he had band members responsive, fired up, enjoying the vibe and having fun, moving with the beat while listening. The music came with Perez’s “dose of optimism” about the role of music and a call for “more human rights, collaboration and respect”.
He told the audience, “We’re doing the job politicians and the UN have failed to do. Music is the best weapon.”
Perez was back on stage at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Saturday afternoon after a consummate opening performance by the Michelle Nicolle Quartet. Uncharacteristically the pianist performed solo on piano and synthesizer, without John Patitucci and Adam Cruz, drawing from his expansive repertoire to delight the crowd in an outing lasting well over 90 minutes including two encores.
Perez employs powerfully percussive chords to create drama, yet amid the vigorous stretches there are lighter sprinklings of notes, rapid runs and abstract forays. Drawing on his Panamanian heritage and West African rhythms, he carefully crafts each piece while sharing his sense of fun. Towards the concert’s end Perez wowed his audience with Steve Pocaro’s Human Nature, Stevie Wonder’s Overjoyed and variations on Waltzing Matilda. A highlight for me was Alternative Realities, dedicated to activist Angela Davis.
At 7pm that evening I had to be there when dear friends celebrated the life of drummer, philosopher and poet Allan Browne (1944 – 2015) by drawing on some wonderful albums and shared bands. The albums were Ithaca Bound, Travellers, Cyclosporin (named from one of Al’s lung transplant medications), Carried by the Sun, The Drunken Boat and 1234. The bands were the Allan Browne Quintet, the Nick Haywood Quartet and Keller, Murphy, Browne.
Dave Beck sat at the drum kit as Andrea Keller, Phil Noy, Eugene Ball and Nick Haywood helped us to remember. We missed not only the man we were there to celebrate, but also his poetry. Asked to comment on the final piece, his Three Planets, saxophonist Phil Noy said simply: “AB turned everything to joy.”
I drove to Apollo Bay that night with thoughts of Allan Browne in my head.
Back in town at 7pm on Sunday I joined the audience in the intimate MRC Salon for First Rhythms, developed by Adam Manning – a composer, percussionist, painter and educator – with members of the Australian Art Orchestra. Opening with a rhythmic acknowledgement, this commissioned work grew out of a year’s composing, sketching, yarning and workshops with the orchestra, led by Aaron Choulai.
This richly evocative exploration of rhythm included two pieces of Chamber Music for Clapsticks, a percussive duo featuring Manning and David Jones, a wonderful piano and cello duo entitled Mend and two improvisations in response to paintings, each displayed on screen.
Choulai conducted the musicians responding to a painting of Awabakai Country (Newcastle) and next the ensemble improvised on the flowing, deep blues suggestive of water, sea and Country in a Worimi painting.
The concert closed with an “immersive sound bath” in which the musicians played over field recordings of water flowing from Barrington Tops to Newcastle beach.
Another example of the AAO’s creativity in collaborations, First Rhythms was a nuanced and finely crafted journey into deeper connections with Country. Bravo to all involved.
At The Jazzlab later on Sunday, Speedball – Grant Windsor, Mat Jodrell, Sam Anning, Carl Mackey and Daniel Susnjar – launched their second album in 25 years, Live, eight years after it was recorded. Slow in coming, in performance it was an absolute hoot, the band letting themselves go in some fast, furious and fun playing (Swagger, Hone Heke) along with a ballad (Til We Meet Again) featuring Jodrell on flugelhorn. I loved the energy and the shared enjoyment, along with the fine musicianiship.
The concept of Take Two at The Jazzlab on Monday and first tried here at last year’s festival was initiated in 2018 by Samuel Ngahane and Jared Proudfoot of New York record label Pique-nique. It’s an excellent idea. Patrons first listen to a high-fidelity recording of an album – in this case John Coltrane’s 1961 release Africa/Brass. It’s an unexpectedly engrossing experience to be in a sold-out venue silently concentrating with others on every nuance of an album you thought you knew fairly well.
In the second “set” a carefully selected live band plays a reinterpretation of the original. In this case a quartet comprising Ed Cawthorne (AKA Tenderlonious) on saxophones and flute, Joshua Smeltink (AKA On-ly) on piano, Henry Hicks (AKA Horatio Luna) on electric bass and Tim Carnegie on drums delivered their version of the three album tracks – Africa, Greensleeves, Blues Minor – along with Coltrane’s Chim Chim Cheree and The Lighthouse from the Ruby Rushton album Legacy.
The audience loved the relentless high intensity of the reworked versions. I longed for more echoes of the original’s two basses working together, one as a drone, with the melody behind. Everyone I talked to later disagreed.
On Tuesday at 7pm Norwegian pianist Liv Andrea Hauge joined her “Australian Trio” – Chloe Kim, who she had met overseas, on drums and percussion, and Jaques Emery on bass – bringing the European flavour that is distinctive yet hard to define and all too seldom invited to our shores.
Despite little rehearsal time, this trio worked so well that it reminded me of a 2022 concert in which pianist Iro Haarla teamed brilliantly with James McLean on drums and Tamara Murphy on bass. Hauge, recorded on the excellent Hubro label, formed an instant connection with Kim and Emery to play eight pieces ranging from expansively flowing to intricate and contained, varying the dynamics, tempo and mood. This was a beautiful outing.
The interestingly named ldvr (La via del fero – The iron way, a reference to early trade routes) followed at 9.30pm in The Jazzlab, the quartet’s engaging drummer Myele Manzanza (NZ, now UK) telling us that Maria Chiara Argiro couldn’t make it, so Daniel Hayles (NZ) had stepped in on piano and synth. London reedsman Alex Hitchcock, who clearly knows how to play saxophone as a rhythm instrument, and Michelangelo Scandroglio (Italy, UK, now France) made for an exciting line-up.
An absolute highlight for me was the Australian premiere of their commissioned work, Music for a Multi-Polar World, which the group played first at this year’s Wellington Jazz Festival. Manzanza explained that, while he was “no arbiter of truth”, his composition was a response to “crazy shit happening in places around the world” and a realisation that his muse could no longer “float above” these events, but had to “sit with that discomfort and be dissonant”.
I was expecting a little more dissonance, but ldvr’s outing was definitely a highlight.
The early concert at The Jazzlab on Wednesday brought students of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance to the stage in Monash University Jazz Futures after intensive rehearsals with Grammy-winning bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh.
The students formed a septet (Combo 1) and then a sextet (Combo 2) with Oh, each with a vocalist. This was an opportunity for the audience to see a seriously talented New York musician up close and for students to challenge themselves with some difficult music. This outing lacked the relaxed exuberance of the Masters and Apprentices concert with Danilo Perez, but there were some excellent contributions, especially from Combo 2.
A huge highlight of the festival followed in the same venue at 9.30pm when Masaki Hayashi on piano, Takashi Sugawa on bass and Shun Ishiwaka on drums shared their compositions as the Banksia Trio – named for the Australian plant genus.
It was the band’s first trip out of Japan and they had our full attention from their opening composition, Drizzling Rain. The mutual understanding between these players and their unwavering focus, coupled with their evident love of performing together, make them the epitome of what a trio can be.
They were able to switch on a dime, moving from abstract percussion to wild abandon within a piece, living up to their reputation for bold, surprising, technically fearless jazz. Yet there was space in the music and beauty to go with the power and episodes gradually building towards frenzy. I loved Banksia Trio. Let’s hope they return soon.
The following night at Quad Club, Banksia Trio were the perfect partners to Speak Percussion in Before Nightfall, on ongoing series in which artists who have not worked together meet to create in one day the music they will perform that night.
It was a sold-out gig and it began late, but magically. In the darkened auditorium, the audience began to hear the delicate sounds of bells. Members of each ensemble moved silently through the seated listeners, touching each other’s tiny bells lightly. What a way to begin.
From there six musicians – Banksia Trio members along with Kaylie Melville, Dure Dara OAM and one other player – used an array of percussive instruments to build a dialogue, varying textures and timbres along with the intensity of their work. I had to hurry off to another concert, but the inherent risk-taking of Before Nightfall had clearly paid off.
Around the corner at The Jazzlab at 9.30pm, Canadians Peggy Lee on cello and Dylan van der Schyff at the drum kit joined Melbourne’s Julien Wilson on tenor saxophone and Theo Carbo on guitar in Open Thread, fresh from a successful tour of the nation Trump wants to become the 51st state.
Open Thread’s eponymous first album was released in September 2024, but their second, Waiting Music, has just been released on Earshift Music.
What a treat to hear the new material, cello notes bending deliciously, the embroidery and chatter of drums, the expansive, warm tones and deep explorations of the sax and the guttural underpinning of the guitar. No wonder Canada loved this band.
On Saturday evening a vigorous set by the Richard Pavlidis Quartet opened at the Melbourne Recital Centre before Linda May Han Oh led a sextet in Invisible Threads. This work was commissioned by the festival and explores the unseen forces that connect us – memory, emotion and shared experience – through music and intriguing visuals by Keith Henry Brown.
With Oh on bass and vocals, Pamela Z (US) on vocals and electronics, Andrea Keller on piano, Mat Jodrell on trumpet, James Muller on guitar and Ben Vanderwal on drums, the music was bound to be spectacular. Images on the large screen suggested connections between sewing and hospitals, connections made and broken, and ties that may control us as puppeteers do marionettes. Other images of children suggested the freedom to run.
As a spectacle and an exhibition of powerful, captivating music Invisible Threads succeeded. But the meanings, memories and experiences behind the work remained a mystery.
My festival closed with the last of six concerts at The Jazzlab featuring guitarist Bill Frisell in a trio with the exemplary Thomas Morgan on bass and Rudy Royston on drums.
This outing was about focus, gradual metamorphosis and repeated patterns rather than too many displays of virtuosity or shredding, yet there were a few guitar growls. Frisell, often with a hint of a smile on his face, was always on watch for opportunities to spark something or respond, occasionally using his pedals to establish a background sequence over which to intervene.
It felt reminiscent of The Necks, the trio being comfortable with the journey rather than the destination. Perhaps, in this last of six concerts, they were winding down a little. But Frisell, Morgan and Royston left us with an enduring message of sorts to appropriately end the festival, letting Burt Bacharach’s melody drift into their improvisation: “What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love.”
Roger Mitchell
PS: I managed to stay a while at the final late night jam – now costing $10 to enter – hosted by The Rookies, which I’m told lasted until after 4am. It’s always so much fun.
PPS: Thanks to festival and venue staff for assistance throughout.
PPPS: More images/galleries will be added when possible