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.

ROGER FRAMPTON AND THE RESURGENCE OF CREATIVE MUSIC

by John Clare

Jazz Magazine, Winter/Spring 1984

Jazz, whether or not it once meant sex, became a non-specific word, like Dada. Unlike Dada, which is forever attached to an art movement of a particular time, its meaning could change with context and inflection. In certain contexts it has had a similar meaning to Dada: an approach to art which elevated the unexpected, the irrational; which played with the rules; which was crazy. Crazy, man, crazy. Man, that music’s gone…

PAUL GRABOWSKY: A TALENT TO BE RECKONED WITH

by Adrian Jackson

Jazz Magazine, March/April, 1983

In the late ‘70s, pianist Paul Grabowsky impressed a lot of observers around Melbourne as a talent to be reckoned with. He proved himself a very capable bebop pianist with his band Giant Steps, worked with a variety of performers including Robyn Archer and George Dreyfus, and really made people sit up and take notice when he formed an association with saxophonist Ted White, contributing both brilliant piano playing and interesting compositions to White’s Quartet. He left for Europe in 1980…

THE ROGER JANES BAND: MAVERICKS WITH EARS

by Bruce Johnson

Jazz Magazine, March/April, 1983

Perhaps because of a longstanding sense of cultural inferiority, a standard Australian jazz pastime has been the slavish recreation of the work of some classic American group — the Hot Five, the Red Hot Peppers, Ellington. The members of the band have been coached to reproduce Louis’ solos, Dodds’ solos, Mitchell’s solos… It has been good to hear those old songs without the surface noise, but after that, what?