Eric Myers Jazz

sydney arts guide

This folder contains reviews written by Eric Myers for the Sydney Arts Guide, edited by David Kary. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of reviews or articles in this folder.

THE SYDNEY CON JAZZ FESTIVAL: SOME IMPRESSIONS

Reviewed by Eric Myers

Sydney Arts Guide, June 4, 2026

The seventh all-day Sydney Con Jazz Festival was held at the Conservatorium on Sunday May 31, 2026, featuring 140 artists in 26 concerts. Once again, as I’ve done in previous years, I congratulate its artistic director David Theak on bringing off a splendid and unique event. As it’s only biennial I wish it could be annual. I say unique because this is a wonderful, indeed indispensable, opportunity for members of the jazz community to gather together in one place. And, what better place than the Conservatorium which has had such a profound effect on the careers of so many of our finest musicians?  In this review, which will cover only a small percentage of the available performances, I will confine my comments to brief impressions, rather than the normal blow-by-blow accounts…

LIADOV & STRAVINSKY AT THE OPERA HOUSE: FAIRY TALES COME TO LIFE

Reviewed by Eric Myers

Sydney Arts Guide, June 16, 2026

Apparently Stravinsky loved the now little-known Russian composer Anatoly Liadov, so it was instructive that the latter’s short eight-minute work Kikimora, written in 1909 and now regarded as a masterpiece, was the curtain-raiser for Stravinsky’s Firebird.  Significantly Kikimora began with the ominous sound of the basses and cellos, immediately conjuring a feeling of bleakness and despair. I heard echoes of the similar use of such sounds in the works of Tchaikovsky and, projecting forwards in history, those sounds also foreshadow the opening bars of Stravinsky’s Firebird…

MICHELLE NICOLLE & PAUL GRABOWSKY AT THE LOUNGE: A CONCERT FOR THE TRUE BELIEVERS

Reviewed by Eric Myers

Sydney Arts Guide, June 21, 2026

This splendid concert at The Lounge in Chatswood featured two visitors from Melbourne, vocalist Michelle Nicolle and pianist Paul Grabowsky. It was an exceedingly unusual event, somewhat out of step with the usual fare presented at this venue. Here was a mere duo, two performers out on a limb, completely exposed, without the customary cushion of other musicians to bounce off, which might have offered the sort of variety which jazz audiences usually enjoy. It’s worth exploring the somewhat vulnerable position in which these two great artists were happy to place themselves: an evening of sad songs from the Great American Songbook, mostly slow ballads which, in the hands of lesser musicians, might well have been a failure. On the contrary, Nicolle and Grabowsky provided a riveting experience: two 45-minute sets which were full of interest from start to finish…