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.

MINIMALISM AND JAZZ

by Ian Muldoon

January 27, 2026

What got me going on an internal mental rant yesterday was a comment about Andrea Keller’s pianism: “it’s just minimalism”. “Just” is what got my hackles hackling. Minimalism is a feature of Dr Keller, and The Necks, and Phil Slater and his works Immersion Lure and The Dark Pattern, and Miles Davis’s iconic Kind Of Blue. Mingus said complicated is easy, simple is really really hard. A piano string plucked by Keller in a particular moment, or a cymbal splash by Jimmy Cobb on So What (Davis) from Kind Of Blue (1959) or a brief clarinet solo by the late John McCarthy (1930-2011) are instances of musical minimalist magic. Of course there are multitudinous point picking possibilities with meaning and definition around the terms “jazz” and “minimalism”…

MY PERFECT JAZZ RECORD

by Ian Muldoon

February 5, 2026

I’m a go-along-to-get-along guy. When my friends go on about the greatness of some rock and roll player, or the genius of Wagner or the brilliance of Gone With The Wind I go along, usually. In 1956 whilst walking home at night after seeing a rock and roll movie, my 15-year-old mate Colin told me Bill Haley’s honking tenor sax player (Joey Ambrose or Rudy Pompilli) was the best in the world. I said nothing. I admit it’s a strange thing to recall after 64 years but there you have it. Adult rock fan friends later claimed Queen was more important than Beethoven and Freddie Mercury was as good as Liszt. Some critics claimed the Beatles rivalled Mozart. I thought the music world was drinking Kool Aid. In jazz, at Sydney’s great little jazz club El Rocco music was cool, but the Cootamundra Jazz Band was not. Audiences at the former couldn’t be too expressive - God forbid to be seen as uncool. At the latter, laughing, clapping, shouting were welcomed. This division was not confined to Australian jazz audiences…

THE ABC OF JAZZ

by Ian Muldoon

March 14, 2026

In the beginning was Africa. The voice as first instrument, the drum as second the body as third.  Somi (nee Laura Kabasomi Kakoma) of Uganda and Rwanda parentage was at Jazzlab on Tuesday, February 17, 2026 with Yunior Terry of Jamaican, Spanish and African heritage on acoustic and electric bass and Toru Dodo of Japanese heritage on piano and Fender Rhodes. A major international artist and the first African woman to be nominated for a Grammy, Somi is completing a PhD at Harvard and channels African rhythm, Miriam Makeba influences, and soul and jazz into her music. Augmenting her full, rich voice are masterful microphone skills in which inter alia a variety of breathing sounds, Xhosa language percussion, humming, and hissing rhythmically enhance her vocals. Jazzlab provides two recent examples of great music in the living moment, music that bookends the genre’s genesis on the one side and its present evolution on the other. Somi exhibited the physicality of her African musical heritage in all its expressive beauty…