Koi Kingdom: “We’ve had to adapt our friendship to a working relationship”

“We’ve made a conscious decision to compose freely in this band, not feeling restricted by genre, just bringing whatever we feel like to the table. You can hear influences of Jazz, 20th Century Classical music, North India Classical music, South American music. With the instrumentation of the music and the mixed influences, you could very much describe it as a contemporary jazz band.”

Ross McHenry: “The Outsiders is an embrace of my Adelaideness”

“My music sounds like me and it sounds like someone who has not grown up in a major centre like Melbourne, or New York, or London. For a long time I was ashamed of this. But I have begun to realise this is also what makes my music worth listening to; its a part of what makes it unique. Matthew Sheens is also from Adelaide (although he’s been living in NY for many years) and Myele Manzanza comes from Wellington in NZ (which is even smaller and more isolated than Adelaide, where I am from). All three of us are coming from the outside of the centre of the worlds we love, participate in and contribute to. The Outsiders is my reflection on all of this.”

Tripataka release their debut album

Jonathan Dimond said, “Tripataka is the playing field, the tester of protypes, and the practical vehicle that balances the theoretic research into the nexus between Western and intercultural composition and improvisation that I have been exploring since my earliest years of music-making.”

Listening to Emma Stephenson’s Hieronymus Trio w. Gian Slater – Where the Rest of the World Begins

Slater’s voice is a perfect choice for the Trio and Stephenson’s songs. Bell-clear, it is a fluid thing, like smoke or drifting water, avoiding any grating blues edges or forced earthiness. It is this instrumental quality a hallmark of all valid jazz singing that fits so neatly with the modern angles and curves of Stephenson’s compositions