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.

BOOK REVIEW: WANGARATTA FESTIVAL OF JAZZ & BLUES 30 YEARS

by Adrian Jackson & Andra Jackson

Reviewed by Eric Myers

The Australian, April 2, 2022

The Wangaratta Jazz Festival, which began in 1990, quickly superseded other regional festivals to become, by the mid-90s, a phenomenon – the country’s leading jazz festival. It was the outcome of what now appears to be a unique vision. This splendid book, written by Adrian Jackson, the festival’s artistic director for 27 years, and his journalist sister Andra Jackson, examines the favourable factors which brought about the festival’s great success…

OBITUARY: BOB BARNARD AM 1933-2022

by Eric Myers

The Australian, May 26, 2022

Bob Barnard was born into a musical family, a cliché perhaps, but perfectly apt here. He was born in Mentone, a seaside suburb south of Melbourne, his mother a pianist who led the Kath Barnard Band, and his father Jim a saxophonist who played drums and banjo. His brother Len, four years older, played piano and drums. Bob began on trumpet at 11, and played in brass bands, before joining the family band at 14. He did his first recording on his 16th birthday. In the book he and his daughter Loretta Barnard published in 2012, Bob Barnard’s Jazz Scrapbook, he dismissed this early effort. “I was pretty green,” he writes. In his Alfred J Hook Memorial Lecture in 2011, however, he was more positive about an album recorded in 1961 by the Len Barnard band, The Naked Dance…

SYDNEY CON JAZZ FESTIVAL: A SMORGASBORD OF TALENT

Reviewed by Eric Myers

The Australian, June 9, 2022

This splendid one-day event featured a commendable array of distinguished Australian jazz performers, further testimony to the overwhelming talent that now exists in Australian jazz, especially amongst younger musicians. As in 2021, when the event roared back with a vengeance after covid, artistic director David Theak could once again hold his head high and bask in the light of substantial achievement. The event encompassed twenty-two 50-minute concerts in six venues within the Conservatorium building…