ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

MY STORY ON MY DAD’S LIFE & DEATH: SOME THINGS WE DID

by Rebecca Clare

April 12, 2022

We were on the far wing, on the seventh floor of the Concord Hospital. The view from the window captured the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House far off in the distance. We could not have asked for a more significant setting. Although of course Dad was completely unaware. The room itself was rather desolate. Christmas songs were playing merrily in the background. We Wish You a Merry Christmas hammering out from the speaker perpetuated the oncoming gloom. It did not feel much like Christmas and it was if the songs were mocking us.  We had sung Bing Crosby’s White Christmas in our finest voices only two weeks earlier, as we wandered together through the grounds of the Holy Spirit…

INSIDE THE MUSICIAN: A JAZZ PARTY

by David Theak

Loudmouth, August 31, 2021

I was raised in a house of parties…impromptu parties (like the time an entire Welsh rugby team arrived at the family home), parties that straddled the weekend, parties where the local loose-cannons turned up uninvited, parties for the recently departed, a party because we haven’t had a party for while…you name the occasion and we’d find a reason to celebrate it, but it was always accompanied by live music. The home phone would ring… “Darling, we’re having a party! [I’d feign surprise]….can you rustle up a band?” As a kid, I’d longingly listen to our downstairs neighbour teaching piano every afternoon. This led to lessons…

PAT QUA: THE ART OF DOING YOUR OWN THING

by Fran Hernon

Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Saturday, April 25, 1987

One day in 1971 Pat Qua was sitting in the staff room at the Sydney high school where she taught economics, looking out over the roofs of nearby houses towards a distant gasometer. Hardly an inspiring vista, one would have thought, but into Pat Qua's mind popped a thought, and the thought was this: We only have one bite at the cherry. She was 46, and suddenly aware of mortality. So she cried “enough”, there is more to life, I'm going to try something different. And she resigned, and became an artist. "I think I read a book on Picasso which was rather inspiring," she reflects. "I liked the idea of his showing his little boy in the morning pictures that he'd painted last night. And I thought now that's different from people who take six months to paint a picture. He painted a picture in one night. I thought Wow! "So I bought a whole lot of flowers and paints and canvas. I wanted to paint everything. I was just consumed with the joy and the freedom"…