Tremendous excitement!

[timothystevens]

Look, people! To prevent our breathless anticipation from doing us permanent respiratory damage, the Bell Award finalists have been announced!

www.bellawards.org/index2.php

And look: our leader is among them. Not once, but twice! Bless his delicacy for not directing our attention thus himself.

Good luck to all!

Cheerfully,
Tim Stevens

[excitable]

Nice line-up...

[Falling]

On the Bell website there is no information as to the whole process at all. Who nominates the finalists? Upon what criteria are the finalists judged? Upon what information, music or cd releases do the Judges rely upon? Do the finalists undergo an interview or performance? There have been some great winners in the past I just wonder why the process isn't more transparent?

[Scoops]

Most artists nominate themselves, you submit 10 CDs plus a rave about how awesome you are, there are 10 judges, and I'm pretty sure they are listed on the website. They would all have their own criteria I imagine! Then I guess they reduce it to 3 finalists then one winner by popular vote.

[timothystevens]

Popular vote? I don't think so.

[confused]

There's arguably only one Australian artist and one Australian group that have ever made a real international impact on jazz music (whatever the hell that is). Namely Scott Tinkler and The Necks. Now The Necks regularly receive awards and deservedly so but why the hell isn't Tinkler honoured at The Bells or The Art Music Awards or The ARIAs? It seriously brings into question the credibility of each of them.

Tinkler is one of the very few trumpet players to have really developed his own sound and language, he is one of the strongest trumpet players in the world and one of the most developed conceptualists as well. And he is Australian, and he is largely ignored by the media and by these awards institutions. Only in Australia would this happen. We are in some ways still such a provincial backwater.

Care to comment?

[Estcrap]

I agree with you although Scott has won an Aria as part of a group and his solo releases have been nominated. Jazz awards are generally considered a joke until of course you win one. The recent award that carried with it a large cash prize for emerging artists is an example of this.

[aj]

Care to comment?

Well I think you're selling a few other musicians short to suggest that The Necks and Tinkler are the ONLY Australian musicians to make any impact on jazz internationally. If you're talking about influence, the Graeme Bell band had a huge impact in Europe way back then. If you mean success, the AJQ were very big in the USA. If you're talking about critical acclaim, quite a few have enjoyed that (for what it's worth) ; and I don't think Tinky is the only one to enjoy peer recognition these days.
As for the various awards, they all have their strengths and flaws, but I don't believe there is any campaign going on to ignore him..........some of these awards require artists (or their record label) to self-nominate.

[confused]

It's just one view and it is, as I said, arguable. But I do think that although there are plenty of excellent Australian players with international profiles, only Tinkler and The Necks have really challenged the way we think about the form. That puts them in a different league in my view. Maybe the Bell band but it's hard to say I think.
The awards should be designed, perhaps, so that artists don't have to self nominate. Or perhaps local record companies etc should get off their butts. Why the hell didn't Australian Art Orchestra nominate Tinkler et al??? They have people paid to do such things surely?

[Scoops]

He hasn't released an album under his own name for a while so I think that would rule him out of just about all the categories at the Bells. They have a 12 month window for releases. But the judges still have to like it so it's hardly worth stressing over.