THE AUSTRALIAN

The Australian has been Australia’s national newspaper since 1964. This folder contains reviews and articles written by Eric Myers and published in The Australian since September, 2015. Text published in the newspaper is reproduced here, with the addition of photographs which may or may not have appeared in The Australian.

DOCUMENTING THE FREE-FLOWING EVOLUTION OF ORNETTE COLEMAN

by Eric Myers

The Australian, October 25, 2019

At the 2009 Meltdown Festival of mixed-genre music in London, musicians from all over the world gathered to pay tribute to American Ornette Coleman. They included Australian-American bassist Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, US punk poet laureate Patti Smith, Senegalese singer/guitarist Baaba Maal, US jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, a traditional Moroccan drum-choir, hip-hop bands, and a host of others. Coleman was then aged 79. What explains his extraordinary reach beyond the jazz world to become, in effect, America’s gift to world music?

JAZZ GREAT WILMA READING STILL HAS THE VOICE OF A LEGEND

by Eric Myers

The Australian, November 4, 2019

Opening the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival on Saturday, Cairns singer Wilma Reading gave a stirring performance, built on her vast experience as a cabaret artist. It was a reminder of the relatively unknown fact that, in the second half of the past century, she was one of the first indigenous Australians to scale international heights as an entertainer, following in the footsteps of her  aunt, the extraordinary singer Georgia Lee…

HAPPY FEET: DANCING & SWINGING IN AUSTRALIA IN THE THIRTIES

by Jack Mitchell

Book Review by Eric Myers

The Australian, November 23, 2019

The roaring twenties were a time of prosperity and raucous high spirits in post-war Australia, just as in the United States. That explains why jazz-influenced dance music - so-called “hot music” - was the popular music of the day, and why the decade was also called the Jazz Age. It was also a decade of emancipation for young women. Modernism was in the air, and the “flappers” wore short skirts, listened to jazz, did the Charleston, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behaviour. The Wall Street crash in 1929 put an end to that delirious party…