Post by Kenny on Dec 13, 2003 16:06:52 GMT 10
KIND OF ROO
Stuart Nicholson goes down under in search of new jazz, Aussie style
Tucked away in a corner of a recent UK newspaper article was a small article that would, had it been given greater prominence, made the average England football fan's blood run cold.
It seems that a survey conducted in Australia soon after the England football team's humbling by the Socceroos surprised everyone in Oz with its findings. The beautiful game, it revealed, has now overtaken cricket in popularity for the first time ever in the country's history. As if their dominance in cricket, rugby union, rugby league, tennis and swimming is not enough, football is now Oz's favourite sport.
The survey estimated that 1.2m Australians above the age of 14 play football at some level, out of a total population of 20m. Cricket is second on 1 m, followed by basketball (892,000) and Australian Rules football (585,000). Digging a little deeper, the article noted there are 38 Australian footballers in the Premiership and three lower divisions.
Around the world, 140 Australians are playing for professional clubs. So soccer fans watch out, just remember how the Australian wine industry - the butt of many jokes a few years ago, such as the famous Monty Python sketch - came from nowhere to become a major force in the wine trade. But it's not only the Socceroos who are determined to make an impact on the world scene.
Australian jazz has also got similar ambitions. Much has been made in recent years of Australia's dynamic new home grown culture and its escape from the collective cultural cringe factor that made it defer to all things European. But in jazz a stage further has been reached allowing it to bypass the cultural cringe exerted by America that often neutralises the music outside the United States.
'Our geographical isolation has sometimes been to our benefit in all the arts by forcing us to delve within ourselves and yank out some originality,' says the veteran Australian jazz musician Graeme Bell. 'We've had to do our own thing'.
Bell had a profound effect on the UK jazz scene when his band visited these shores in February 1948. As Jim Godbolt notes in his excellent A History of Jazz in Britain 1919-1950: 'An Antipodean cockiness was cheerfully and successfully projected, but their main contribution was to introduce jazz for dancing, an innovation with far reaching financial and social results that favourably affected the entire (UK) jazz club movement.'
Bell is now regarded as the grandfather of Australian jazz and although in his eighties remains a shrewd and respected observer of his native jazz
scene.
'I think one thing that comes through with Australian jazz is an openness because our stuff was spawned in open spaces and not in speakeasies and bordellos and nightclubs, and I think that comes out in Australian jazz. Plus a slight touch of Aussie bravado as well,' he says.
It's a point echoed by pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky, who lived in Europe for a while in the 1980s touring and recording with the likes of Art Farmer, Benny Bailey, Chet Baker and Johnny Griffin. Currently
he divides his time between writing film music - such as Jungle Book 2 and the Michael Caine film Last Orders - and jazz. With his trio and through his direction of the Art Orchestra of Australia he has won considerable
critical acclaim, with his Art Orchestra collecting 'Jazz Ensemble of the Year' at this year's Australian Jazz
Awards. He, too, is quick to point out that Australians, away from the mainstream of jazz in America, have been forced to draw inspiration from their own culture.
'Take saxophonist Bernie McGann, for example, one of the great Australian jazz artists,' he says. 'His sound reminds me very much of the Australian landscape. There is something dry and brittle and almost "kookaburra-like" about the way he plays. He's spent a lot of time out doors and I don't know to what extent he has been influenced by ambient sounds but he's dry, witty - very much an "Australian" sound.'
Grabowsky also points to the drummer John Pochee. 'He's a very unusual jazz drummer; and he doesn't sound like an American jazz drummer; he swings in a very unusual way. There's a kind of roughness and again, it's Australian.
'Australia is a rough place. This is not a place of niceties. This is a place where people love swearing and love ridiculing each other and love ridiculing the rest of the world but who are actually very resourceful people.
'This is why great jazz comes out of Australia, because we are great improvisers. We have to be! We have no choice. Australia is an improvisation, it's an improvised democracy in the middle of the South Seas. And now a generation of players have come up who are extraordinary players and don't sound like anybody else.'
Grabowsky has several of this new breed of Oz jazz musician in his Art Orchestra. There's trumpeter Scott Tinkler and saxophonists Sandy Evans ('jazz artist of the year' in the Australian Jazz Awards) and
Julien Wilson who can be heard on the award-winning Passion (ABC).
The vocalist Judy Jacques is another Oz original, winner of 'best vocal album,' while bands such as the Necks, Ishish and Red Fish Blue are not only world class but project a definite Australian sensibility.
Pianist and composer Andrea Keller won 'best contemporary jazz album' in the awards for her remarkable album Mikrokosmos (ABC), a brilliantly conceived and executed re-imagining of Bartok.
However, most stunning of all is the brilliant young pianist Aaron Ottignon, winner of the 'young Australian artist of the year' award, and destined to number among the finest musicians in all of jazz.
New Zealander Mike Nock who in the 1960s recorded with Yusef Lateef, John Handy and formed the exciting pioneering jazz rock group Fourth Way - has long been a fixture on the Australian scene.
Nock was a finalist at the awards with his elegant piano trio on Changing Seasons (DIW) and in comparing the current Australian jazz scene to what he has heard on his frequent visits to America has this to say:
'Sure, the level of playing in the States is excellent. But what is really lacking is new, exciting music from the underground - from young people. Jazz there seems to be a music for older people or conservative younger people. It's quite bizarre to me. I feel Australian jazz is now closer to what jazz is all about, it's a bit irreverent and above all it's about self expression. I think those qualities are here in spades and there's some hugely talented musicians here and pretty soon the world is going to hear about them!'
So, don't say you haven't been warned.
Jazzwise NOVEMBER200313
Stuart Nicholson goes down under in search of new jazz, Aussie style
Tucked away in a corner of a recent UK newspaper article was a small article that would, had it been given greater prominence, made the average England football fan's blood run cold.
It seems that a survey conducted in Australia soon after the England football team's humbling by the Socceroos surprised everyone in Oz with its findings. The beautiful game, it revealed, has now overtaken cricket in popularity for the first time ever in the country's history. As if their dominance in cricket, rugby union, rugby league, tennis and swimming is not enough, football is now Oz's favourite sport.
The survey estimated that 1.2m Australians above the age of 14 play football at some level, out of a total population of 20m. Cricket is second on 1 m, followed by basketball (892,000) and Australian Rules football (585,000). Digging a little deeper, the article noted there are 38 Australian footballers in the Premiership and three lower divisions.
Around the world, 140 Australians are playing for professional clubs. So soccer fans watch out, just remember how the Australian wine industry - the butt of many jokes a few years ago, such as the famous Monty Python sketch - came from nowhere to become a major force in the wine trade. But it's not only the Socceroos who are determined to make an impact on the world scene.
Australian jazz has also got similar ambitions. Much has been made in recent years of Australia's dynamic new home grown culture and its escape from the collective cultural cringe factor that made it defer to all things European. But in jazz a stage further has been reached allowing it to bypass the cultural cringe exerted by America that often neutralises the music outside the United States.
'Our geographical isolation has sometimes been to our benefit in all the arts by forcing us to delve within ourselves and yank out some originality,' says the veteran Australian jazz musician Graeme Bell. 'We've had to do our own thing'.
Bell had a profound effect on the UK jazz scene when his band visited these shores in February 1948. As Jim Godbolt notes in his excellent A History of Jazz in Britain 1919-1950: 'An Antipodean cockiness was cheerfully and successfully projected, but their main contribution was to introduce jazz for dancing, an innovation with far reaching financial and social results that favourably affected the entire (UK) jazz club movement.'
Bell is now regarded as the grandfather of Australian jazz and although in his eighties remains a shrewd and respected observer of his native jazz
scene.
'I think one thing that comes through with Australian jazz is an openness because our stuff was spawned in open spaces and not in speakeasies and bordellos and nightclubs, and I think that comes out in Australian jazz. Plus a slight touch of Aussie bravado as well,' he says.
It's a point echoed by pianist and composer Paul Grabowsky, who lived in Europe for a while in the 1980s touring and recording with the likes of Art Farmer, Benny Bailey, Chet Baker and Johnny Griffin. Currently
he divides his time between writing film music - such as Jungle Book 2 and the Michael Caine film Last Orders - and jazz. With his trio and through his direction of the Art Orchestra of Australia he has won considerable
critical acclaim, with his Art Orchestra collecting 'Jazz Ensemble of the Year' at this year's Australian Jazz
Awards. He, too, is quick to point out that Australians, away from the mainstream of jazz in America, have been forced to draw inspiration from their own culture.
'Take saxophonist Bernie McGann, for example, one of the great Australian jazz artists,' he says. 'His sound reminds me very much of the Australian landscape. There is something dry and brittle and almost "kookaburra-like" about the way he plays. He's spent a lot of time out doors and I don't know to what extent he has been influenced by ambient sounds but he's dry, witty - very much an "Australian" sound.'
Grabowsky also points to the drummer John Pochee. 'He's a very unusual jazz drummer; and he doesn't sound like an American jazz drummer; he swings in a very unusual way. There's a kind of roughness and again, it's Australian.
'Australia is a rough place. This is not a place of niceties. This is a place where people love swearing and love ridiculing each other and love ridiculing the rest of the world but who are actually very resourceful people.
'This is why great jazz comes out of Australia, because we are great improvisers. We have to be! We have no choice. Australia is an improvisation, it's an improvised democracy in the middle of the South Seas. And now a generation of players have come up who are extraordinary players and don't sound like anybody else.'
Grabowsky has several of this new breed of Oz jazz musician in his Art Orchestra. There's trumpeter Scott Tinkler and saxophonists Sandy Evans ('jazz artist of the year' in the Australian Jazz Awards) and
Julien Wilson who can be heard on the award-winning Passion (ABC).
The vocalist Judy Jacques is another Oz original, winner of 'best vocal album,' while bands such as the Necks, Ishish and Red Fish Blue are not only world class but project a definite Australian sensibility.
Pianist and composer Andrea Keller won 'best contemporary jazz album' in the awards for her remarkable album Mikrokosmos (ABC), a brilliantly conceived and executed re-imagining of Bartok.
However, most stunning of all is the brilliant young pianist Aaron Ottignon, winner of the 'young Australian artist of the year' award, and destined to number among the finest musicians in all of jazz.
New Zealander Mike Nock who in the 1960s recorded with Yusef Lateef, John Handy and formed the exciting pioneering jazz rock group Fourth Way - has long been a fixture on the Australian scene.
Nock was a finalist at the awards with his elegant piano trio on Changing Seasons (DIW) and in comparing the current Australian jazz scene to what he has heard on his frequent visits to America has this to say:
'Sure, the level of playing in the States is excellent. But what is really lacking is new, exciting music from the underground - from young people. Jazz there seems to be a music for older people or conservative younger people. It's quite bizarre to me. I feel Australian jazz is now closer to what jazz is all about, it's a bit irreverent and above all it's about self expression. I think those qualities are here in spades and there's some hugely talented musicians here and pretty soon the world is going to hear about them!'
So, don't say you haven't been warned.
Jazzwise NOVEMBER200313