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.

GRAEME BELL AT 75: RELUCTANT JAZZ COMPOSER

by Eric Myers

APRA Magazine, October, 1989

The achievements of Graeme Bell's career are well-documented, no better than in his own autobiography Graeme Bell: Australian Jazzman, published in 1988. During the 1940s he and a number of musicians grouped around him in Melbourne pioneered the traditional jazz movement in that city, before his Australian Jazz Band travelled in 1947 to the World Youth Festival in Prague, Czechoslovakia. They went on to England where they opened the Leicester Square Jazz Club, which revolutionised British music…

THE JAZZ TRUMPET: BRINGING OUT THE HUMAN IN ME

by Ian Muldoon

October 15, 2019

Why “jazz” trumpet and not just trumpet? Because jazz is concerned with the individual expression of the musician more than it is with the nearness of the music to a “classical” standard. In this essay when I talk trumpet I mean trumpet, flugelhorn, cornet or pocket trumpet as played by jazz musicians in a jazz context. The trumpet is the first instrument, so to speak. It gives voice or power in homage to the first human cry, to the human desire to communicate and the evolutionary drive to dominate…

JASON BRUER: HAMMERHEAD IS WITHOUT DOUBT MY MUSE

by Nikos Fotakis

Australianjazz.net, October 16, 2019

Jason Bruer is back – not that he was ever away. One of the staples of the Sydney jazz scene, the restless saxophonist has been involved in a series of ensembles, and has been leading a few bands of his own, covering a vast range of styles, from soul-jazz to all shades of bop. Now he has a new album out, Turning Point, with his Hammerhead band. So the opening sentence of this interview should be ‘Hammerhead is back – playing some wonderful new tunes by Jason Bruer’…