The shortlist for this year’s Australian Jazz “BELL” Awards has been officially announced. This year’s crop has been extraordinary, with many great albums submitted in the competition. The amount of talent in this list is overwhelming, and it is bound to make the work of the judges very hard
“I think the best kind of award is the one you can’t give. It’s the one that you get from being intimate with music. The award comes when you listen and the hair on the back of your neck stands up, your skin shivers with ecstasy, you cry because there can’t be anything more beautiful than this right now. Anyone who can hear is capable of winning that award, all they have to do is listen.”
“Living in America is what drew my personality out completely. In the United States, they really celebrate the individual. It was an environment where I found myself unafraid to try things and really develop the music I was hearing in my head.”
It was a bright and starry night, one of mirth and celebration and camaraderie. It was the night that artists and supporters, musicians and afficionados, […] Read More
The agony and speculation is over. The nominees for this year’s Australian Jazz Bell Awards have been announced. Among them appear, naturally, some of the […] Read More
From the media release Celebrating its 13th year in 2015, the Jazz Bell Awards, the only jazz-specific awards in Australia to acknowledge excellence in performance, […] Read More
“My first guitar teacher, Vince Hopkins, was really instrumental in unlocking the sounds I was hearing on the guitar. Vince is a really fantastic player and one of the most musical people on the planet.” Mike Anderson
“I freaked out the first time I heard Peter Bernstein! The thing that I attracted me to his playing at first was the larger intervals he used, which I hadn’t really thought about or done before that.” – Jeremy Thomson
extempore and the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues have collaborated with National Jazz Award winners from every year of the festival since it began. The result is this eclectic set of souvenir postcards from some of our most creative musicians.
I love playing for festival crowds. Everyone has taken time out and is immersed in music for a few days and there is a lot of energy in that fact. I’m looking forward to telling my story with jazz guitar and enjoying the opportunity to play alongside the other top young players in the country. From what I know of the other guys, everyone is a monster player and expresses a diverse representation of the broad ‘jazz guitar’ genre.
