Eric Myers Jazz

AJAZZ ARTICLES & REVIEWS 2019-

This folder contains reviews and articles written by Eric Myers for the Australian Jazz Museum’s magazine AJAZZ. Myers commenced writing occasional pieces for the magazine in November, 2019. Readers may click on the INDEX button for a list of reviews and articles in this folder. Click on the title of any review or article that you wish to read.

CHRIS CODY: MOUNTAIN TO SEA

Album review by Eric Myers

Music composed by Chris Cody + free improvisations

AJAZZ 106, August, 2025

For some reason I wasn’t expecting Mountain to Sea to be as good as it is. Perhaps I was spooked by the fact that there’s no drummer, and therefore the album has to be considered as something of an experiment. There’s an old truism in jazz which I’ve come to believe: change the drummer and you have a new band. But how do we categorise the music, when there’s no drummer to give the music its essential character? The instrumentation on Mountain to Sea is very unusual: a quartet with two saxophones atop a rhythm section of piano & bass…

BONNIE J JENSEN: RISE

Album review by Eric Myers

AJAZZ 107, November 2025

New Zealand-born, but now Sydney resident, vocalist Bonnie J Jensen has released her fifth album entitled RISE. It has 12 tracks: three tunes recorded with members of the Dan Barnett big band in May 2024, and nine others recorded with a sextet over two days in January 2025 at Rancom St Studios in Sydney. It would take up too much space to list in full the names of all the excellent musicians who played on this beautiful album but, in a recent interview with Fine Music broadcaster Barry O’Sullivan, Jensen nominated the following musicians who can be regarded as key to the album’s success: Brett Hirst (bass), Graham Jesse (flutes and saxes), Matt McMahon (piano and keyboards), Nick McBride (drums and percussion), Ray Cassar (trumpet and flugelhorn) and Geoff Hughes (guitar). Those names amply indicate how well-chosen the musicians were for this outstanding album…

DANIEL WILFRED PAUL GRABOWSKY PETER KNIGHT: RAKI

Album review by Eric Myers

AJAZZ 107, November 2025

This album, recorded live in concert at Monash Performing Arts Centre, features three musicians, Daniel Wilfred (voice and clapsticks), Paul Grabowsky (piano) and Peter Knight (trumpet, electronics, and live signal processing). Even though there are two experienced jazz improvisers performing here this does not ameliorate my feeling that my long experience as a jazz reviewer has not prepared me for an album like Raki. Knowing next to nothing about traditional First Nations music which Wilfred apparently exemplifies, I am moving into completely unknown territory…