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.
SYDNEY TRUMPETER WINS THE PRESTIGIOUS FREEDMAN FELLOWSHIP
by Eric Myers
The Studio, September 3, 2022
The Australian, September 6, 2022
After a two-year hiatus owing to COVID, the Freedman Jazz Fellowship has roared back to the Sydney Opera House, confirming its place as one of the premier jazz events of the year. Three finalists, culled from a list of 16 original candidates, competed for the prestigious $21,000 award. They were two Sydney-based musicians, trumpeter Tom Avgenicos and drummer Holly Conner, and Melbourne-based saxophonist Flora Carbo. After scintillating performances by all three candidates, Avgenicos was declared the winner…
John Pochée
OBITUARY: JOHN POCHÉE 1940-2022
by Eric Myers
The Weekend Australian, November 19, 2022
Of the contemporary jazz musicians active since WW2, few were more significant than the drummer and bandleader John Pochée. He began his working life as a copy boy at the Sydney Morning Herald but, by the time he was 18, had committed himself to music at a time in the late 1950s when modern jazz in Sydney was in its infancy…
Andrew Speight
OBITUARY: ANDREW SPEIGHT 1964-2022
by Eric Myers
The Weekend Australian, December 12, 2022
Andrew Speight and his two younger sisters Caroline and Emma, were born in Sydney into a highly musical family. Their father John Speight, who died in 2007, was a school teacher and accomplished pianist, best-known from 1980 as the artistic director of the Manly International Jazz Festival, which still survives today. Their mother Niddrie Speight, now 82, was a star vocalist as a teenager who sang jazz and show tunes. "We’d wake up to music, listen to music through dinner, talk about what we were listening to, and go to sleep to music,” Andrew’s sister Emma Mayhew told writer Jeff Kaliss in the splendid obituary Kaliss published in the US publication San Francisco Classical Voice…