JAZZ ALBUM REVIEWS IN THE AUSTRALIAN
In September, 2017 Eric Myers commenced reviewing jazz albums in the Review supplement of The Weekend Australian. All reviews in this folder are written by Myers.
JAZZ
ORIGINS
RICHARD PAVLIDIS
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Independent
Four stars
Published in the Weekend Australian, April 17, 2021
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This album from the formidable Melbourne saxophonist Richard Pavlidis is a mixed blessing. Its success depends primarily on Pavlidis himself, his virtuosity and attractive compositions being the main assets here. While his outstanding 2019 album Without Within presented an acoustic quartet with a high degree of interactive empathy, Origins moves in a different direction. Given the pandemic Pavlidis staggered his recording schedule, using eight musicians in different combinations, and chose to overdub layers of synthesiser sounds which give the album a pleasing ambience. Brilliant solos are provided by talented keyboardist Mike Pensini, and the orchestral backgrounds provided by electronics work very well. One cannot ignore certain qualities in Pavlidis’s playing: the earnestness of John Coltrane, and the stamina of Sonny Rollins. A saxophone colossus in the making, Pavlidis is unerringly on track.
Eric Myers
JAZZ
EVERYTHING AND OTHER INFINITIES
MICROFICHE
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Creative Sources Recordings
Three stars
Published in the Weekend Australian, April 24, 2021
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Free improvisation, where jazz musicians organize sound spontaneously, without pre-ordained chord structures or written melodies, is not new. It’s one of many genres in the jazz canon, as predictable as others still being played today. Still, the seven young musicians in Microfiche pose fascinating questions. Nick Calligeros may sound like a child who has picked up the trumpet for the first time and is trying to get a sound out of it. Is this music? What about the repetition of banal phrases, or dissonant harmonies? The didacticism underlying this music, presenting sounds designed to be discomforting, and to challenge our idea of what music is, is probably nonetheless good for us. Note that keyboardist Novak Manojlovic’s contributions are very beautiful, confirming that luckily the pristine sound of the acoustic piano cannot be distorted.
Eric Myers
JAZZ
EARLY RISERS
JOHN SCURRY’S REVERSE SWING
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Lionsharecords
Four-and-a-half stars
Published in the Weekend Australian, May 1, 2021
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This follow-up to John Scurry’s brilliant 2018 album Post Matinée has 20 Scurry compositions on two discs, but without the former album’s clever vocals. A great Melbourne rhythm section (Scurry, guitar; Howard Cairns, bass; and Danny Fischer, drums) recalls the time-feels of the swing era, while various soloists, some of whom are modernists, seamlessly transfer their sensibilities into the pre-bebop idiom. A major delight here is the rich, fruity traditionalist sound of newcomer Brennan Hamilton-Smith’s clarinet. Trumpeter Eugene Ball has written the horn parts and collaborated with Scurry on the arrangements. Other musicians heard here include Stephen Grant on alto saxophone, James Macaulay on trombone and Matt Boden on piano, while pianist Sam Keevers guests on two tracks. This is a classic example of genre-jumping jazz, in that melodic compositions are played in styles which blur conventional categories. Accordingly they push the music into a timeless generic style, which I believe is best described as Ellingtonian.
Eric Myers