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
EARTHEN
SAM ANNING
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Earshift Music
Four-and-a-half stars
Published in the Weekend Australian, May 18, 2024
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The inspiration for this album is important, as it deeply affects how one hears the music. Sam Anning played bass in Uncle Archie Roach’s bands for the last three years of Roach’s life. Moreover, Anning and guitarist Steve Magnusson attended Warrnambool Base Hospital and played softly while the award-winning songwriter and musician, then in intensive care, greeted and farewelled family shortly before his death in July 2022. Uncle Archie pointed at the instruments being played and said “This is earthenware. They are made from the earth, music comes from the earth and these instruments carry it, and it goes back to the earth”. An all-star septet performs nine compositions inspired by one of Australia’s most respected Aboriginal elders: Anning himself, Mat Jodrell (trumpet), Carl Mackey (alto saxophone), Andrea Keller (piano, wurlitzer), Julien Wilson (tenor saxophone, electronics), Theo Carbo (electric & acoustic guitars), and Kyrie Anderson (drums). Most tracks have an elegiac quality which pervades this very moving album. I believe Anning’s music authentically reflects the majesty of Uncle Archie’s legacy.
Eric Myers
JAZZ
NO POSTCODE
MACE FRANCIS ORCHESTRA
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Independent
Four-and-a-half stars
Published in the Weekend Australian, May 18, 2024
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While I’m not familiar with all of this orchestra’s nine previous albums, I believe that No Postcode represents a significant evolution for Perth composer/arranger Mace Francis. His well-known mastery of conventional big band orchestration is revealed here in six compositions, but each one is spiced up with fascinating flights of the imagination. Every track on the album is strong. It’s not surprising to hear that these works, which reek of substance, have been germinating over the last six years. Francis’s virtuosic knowledge of how to get the richest colours out of the various sections of the big band, is illustrated throughout. Many unusual boxes are ticked. For example the somewhat startling title track borrows from rock music in featuring the sound of so-called “noise guitar” but in Francis’s hands the work sounds compellingly fresh, rather than a mere reworking of jazz/rock fusion conventions. Francis’s own testimony is revealing: “It’s so nice to be able to write music that is me, rather than having to bend the music into a style”.
Eric Myers
JAZZ
THE WILD WILD EAST
ZODIAC
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ABC Jazz
Four stars
Published in the Weekend Australian, June 8, 2024
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This beautiful debut album is to the credit of ABC Jazz, as this is another of its valuable Jazz Commissions. Zodiac, jazz artists in residence at radio station 2MBS Fine Music in 2023, is a quartet including four young Asian-Australians who met as students at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music: pianist Jordan Chung and drummer Manson Luk (both with three compositions here); tenor saxophonist Hinano Fujisaki (two compositions) and double bassist Sabine Tapia. Finding themselves between two cultures, they felt detached from the Asian cultures they left behind and their music grapples with the realities of Australian multicultural life. Chung’s composition Seedling is about “starting anew, navigating the uncharted territories of identity and belonging, and embracing the courage needed to push up through the soil and blossom in a new home”. These highly talented musicians have found in jazz a means to express the emotions involved in their journey, and the result is an intensely melodic and ruminative album. I found the moments of repose in their music very moving.
Eric Myers