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.
Aaron Choulai
AUSTRALIAN ART ORCHESTRA 30TH ANNIVERSARY
by Ian Muldoon
November 23, 2024
The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) was established in 1994 by composer and pianist Paul Grabowsky AO. Its history, and Grabowsky’s cultural and social impact, and musical achievements are for others to relate. I’m sticking to a personal response and some observations about the celebratory performance of its 30th Anniversary on November 15, 2024 at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Elizabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne. It could have been marketing smarts to call a jazz band an “art orchestra”. To be a musician is one thing, to be a jazz musician is quite another, Roscoe Mitchell once opined. Grabowsky would have been very well aware of the label “jazz” being bloated with connotations and denotations some of them spawning mind images of white guys (yes, guys) in boater hats in a pub, or black guys (yes, guys) making wild sounds, or just noise. However, in this new century the label may be attaining a new status…
Meg Cohen
THE MOIRAI TRIO 2024
by Ian Muldoon
December 31, 2024
Chamber (improvised) music with its dynamics, subtleties, microtones, expressive range, is affected by the elements of that setting, such as seating, audience, sound quality, energy and manner of performance, mood of players and expectations, the feeling in the room. Expectations include that a paid performance is no rehearsal, it’s not some casual insight into the latest garage band, but a presentation by musicians of a programme of work, curated to exhibit the best they have to offer at this stage of their development or a recap of their most satisfactory works honed over a long period of intense practice, discussion and experimentation… On the evening of December 5, 2024, at the Quad Club at 8pm I listened to Moirai, a chamber trio of Meg Cohen, violin; David Moran, cello; and Alexander Meagher, percussion and vibraphone. Moirai fulfilled expectations, indeed in some ways exceeded them, but Moirai also raised issues about women in the musical arts, cultural and historical education, genre-free music and the spoken word…