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.

INTRODUCTION TO THE LAUNCH OF EMILY RYTMEISTER’S FILM, ROGER FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE!

by Hart Cohen

November 3, 2022

My intent is to keep my introduction to Emily Rytmeister brief. As this is the launch of her film, “Roger Frampton Comes Alive”, it is Emily’s special night. When Emily first called on me with the proposal for a doctoral dissertation to make a documentary film about her father, the accomplished jazz musician and academic, Dr Roger Frampton, I was immediately interested. The combination of jazz and documentary film was attractive to me but there was also a compelling story that underpinned the proposal. Emily is Roger’s daughter and so the film would have this important relationship at its core. This  suggested the project would be one of passion and a labour of love…

INTRODUCTION TO ‘ROGER FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE!’

by Emily Rytmeister

January 2, 2023

In writing about her father, the American painter Philip Guston, Musa Mayer offers the following reflection: “I am forced to look elsewhere, aware that there is something more than a little pathetic about my turning to these secondary sources––like some doctoral student researching her dissertation––to learn about my own father’s life. Nevertheless, it is what I have to work with. Perhaps then, through reading all this, I will know him at last.” The quote captures Mayer’s desire to understand her father – and, of course, my own. The film, ‘Roger Frampton Comes Alive!’, represents my journey of ‘coming to know’ Roger…

ROGER FRAMPTON: AN OUTSTANDING JAZZ MUSICIAN IN HIS TIME

Film review by Ted Nettelbeck

December 23, 2022

Roger Frampton (born 20 May, 1948 – died 4 January, 2000, aged 51 years) was one of the most extraordinarily talented and dedicated improvising musicians whom I have met. Although he long preferred to think of himself as a saxophonist, and even a percussionist, in my opinion he became the most outstanding jazz pianist in Australia during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. But he was also an impressive composer, an accomplished arranger; and he was an exciting alto and sopranino saxophonist, with a lovely alto tone reminiscent of Paul Desmond, whom Roger had admired during his formative years…