Tag Archives: Miroslav Bukovsky

STONNINGTON PAYS TRIBUTE

Posted on May 15, 2015 | Leave a comment
Andrea Keller and Andrew Robson

Andrea Keller and Andrew Robson in The Komeda Project at Bennetts Lane

PREVIEW

Andrea Keller and Miroslav Bukovsky Octet, The Komeda Project, Chapel Off Chapel, Friday 15 May, 7.50pm, $25 – $30

LAST night one of my favourite festivals of improvised music was launched at Malvern Town Hall with a grab bag of acts including Women of Soul, Paul Williamson’s Hammond Jazz Party and the Compton Organ Exhibition.

Sadly, the familiar red, black and white program for the 10-year anniversary of this all-Australian jazz festival is missing the familiar face of its artistic director for many years, Adrian Jackson.

Yet the guiding hand of Jackson, which has been especially valued for bringing together unusual and spectacularly successful combinations of artists at Stonnington’s festival and over the years at Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues, is still evident in at least one concert this year.

Jackson had booked Andrea Keller and Miroslav Bukovsky to  present The Komeda Project at Stonnington well before he handed over the reins to program director Darcy Condon — booker for Sydney venues The Hopetoun Hotel and The Annandale Hotel during their glory days in the early 1990s, part of the team that established The Metro on George Street and more recently part of the team organising Byron Bay’s Splendour In the Grass festival.

With an ensemble of eight brilliant Australian contemporary musicians, Keller and Bukovsky in December last year at Bennetts Lane Jazz Lab treated us to a spectacularly creative response to, and reinterpretation of, some music of Polish film music composer and jazz pianist Krzysztof Komeda. The two sets were quite different, reflecting Keller and Bukovsky’s different takes on Komeda’s music.

If you have the chance to get to anything on the program at this year’s Stonnington festival, do not miss this chance — tonight, 15 May at 7.50pm at Chapel Off Chapel — to be moved and warmed by the creativity of Canberra trumpet player/composer/improviser Bukovsky and Melbourne’s pianist/composer/improvisor Andrea Keller along with the Stonnington Youth Jazz Initiative.

The program does not list musicians in the line-up, but I assume James Greening will be in town to add his charm, wit and trombone work to die for. And it is to be hoped that Erkki Veltheim will be in the octet.

To whet the appetite, here are a few images from the Bennetts Lane performance of The Komeda Project. I am sorry that work prevents me from being there tonight for what was a musical highlight for me in its earlier incarnation.

ROGER MITCHELL

The Komeda Project at Bennetts Lane

The Komeda Project at Bennetts Lane

Andrew Robson and Miroslav Bukowsky

Andrea Keller, Andrew Robson and Miroslav Bukovsky

Erkki Veltheim

Erkki Veltheim

The Komeda Project

The Komeda Project

James Greening

Miroslav Bukovsky and James Greening

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PARIS ON A GUITAR STRING

Posted on October 19, 2014 | 1 comment
Alex Stuart

Alex Stuart performs at Bennetts Lane Jazz Club in 2012

AUSTRALIAN TOUR: Alex Stuart Quintet

The title of this post will mean little to many, but it alludes to the first Lonely Planet guide that I ever used, South-East Asia on a Shoestring, which accompanied me on the trek up through the wilds of Java and Sumatra and beyond many, many years ago.

But I digress. We have come to expect — and look forward to — visits home by expatriate musician Alex Stuart from his adopted home in France.

The guitarist (www.alexstuartmusic.com/) is back from Paris this month and joins some of Australia’s top jazz musicians to launch his new album Place to Be. Stuart moved to France in 2005 after graduating from the ANU School of Music in Canberra.

His Australian tour follows the album’s launch in May at Paris’s Sunset Jazz Club. The album, released by the French label Gaya / Abeille Musique, has received many enthusiastic critical responses there, including Nouvelle-Vague magazine’s “balanced to perfection … one of the best jazz albums of the year – 5 stars” and national radio station France Musique’s “an absolutely superb album … music that shimmers”.

In Australia, ABC Jazz made it a “feature album”, while The Australian’s John McBeath praised it and gave it 4 out 5 stars.

Stuart has been immersed in the rich and varied musical cultures of the Paris jazz scene and, through a residency in Kolkata, in the Hindustani classical tradition. He is well recognised in Europe, known for his 2010 album, Around, and winning the prestigious 2011 Révelation prize at the Jazz à Juan jazz festival. In 2012 he played at the Wangaratta Festival and in 2013 he was nominated for the Freedman Jazz Scholarship.

Stuart says he welcomes opportunities to return to Australia, the country that has influenced his music in many ways and “has also directly inspired several of my compositions, most recently the Place to Be track Cuttagee, Wapengo, which comes from fond memories of the NSW Far South Coast”.

Describing Place to Be as an “ode to cultural openness”, Stuart says he finds inspiration in many places, “including the jazz tradition, contemporary jazz, African and South American grooves, rock and post-rock, Indian and Balkan music, Australia, life in Paris’s 19th arrondissement and the sea and surfing”.

For his quintet on tour, Stuart Alex has three-time Bell Jazz Awards winner Julien Wilson on saxophone, ARIA award winner and founder of the band Wanderlust, Miroslav Bukovsky on trumpet, winner of several Bell and other jazz awards Jonathan Zwartz  on double bass, and on drums Tim Firth, who won the 2011 National Jazz Award at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival.

Alex Stuart

Alex Stuart at Bennetts in 2012

Alex Stuart’s tour dates:

  • Tuesday 21 October: MJC / Bennetts Lane Jazz Club, 25 Bennetts Lane, Melbourne
  • Wednesday 22 October: Venue 505, 280 Cleveland St Surry Hills, Sydney
  • Saturday 25 October: Wollongong Conservatorium of Music, Wollongong
  • Sunday 26 October: Zephyrs Jazz, Four Winds Windsong Pavilion, Barragga Bay, (near Bermagui) NSW
  • Monday 27 October: The Street Theatre, Canberra

 Alex will also play as a quartet at MONA and other venues in Tasmania between 30 October and 1 November.

ROGER MITCHELL

 

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GALUMPHING ’ROUND THE NATION — ANDREA KELLER QUARTET

Posted on August 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

CD REVIEW

Andrea Keller Quartet

3.5 stars

A TRIUMPHANT gallop, as Lewis Carroll conceived “galumphing”, is an apt description of this foursome’s national tour, armed with Andrea Keller’s compositions and invitations for guests along the way to make up a quintet.

So Miroslav Bukovsky, Phil Slater, Bernie McGann, Jamie Oehlers, John Rodgers and Stephen Magnusson in turn join the core of Keller (piano), Eugene Ball (trumpet), Ian Whitehurst (tenor sax) and Joe Talia (drums).

The result is a feast of compositional and playing styles, as Keller’s inventiveness intersects with the creativity of guests on their chosen instruments. Trumpet complements trumpet, sax adds to sax, and violin and guitar each contribute their tone and timbre.

Galumphing ably airs the nation’s talent.

Download: For Bernie, Small Comforts
CD launch: Aug 29, Uptown Jazz Cafe, 7pm

ROGER MITCHELL

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