“I’m so grateful to be able to sing, to make jazz my vocation: I dedicated my life to this; It helps me, it sustains me, it supports me, it has allowed me to travel more and make friends. Besides, singing itself is its own reward.”
Category: Profiles
“My first thought when I took over the role was that I want people who think they don’t like jazz to discover it in new ways, in new formats”.
“Charlotte Mclean is one of the best emerging vocal talents on the Australian jazz scene. A beautiful tone, great expressive range and an adventurous improviser”.
Albert Dadon is very ambitious about Bird’s Basement, expressing the certainty that it will become “one of the best clubs in the world”.
” I think it’s important to know that you’re good enough as you are, exactly how you’re feeling, on and off stage, and to be honest about that. It certainly makes things more interesting! “
From the Ritz ballroom in Brisbane to the Copacabana in New York (via Singapore) and from the London Palladium to the legendary Johnny Carson show […] Read More
‘If you’re going to do anything in life you just have to say, “Well, I’ve just got to make my little patch of garden over here”, and if I’m improvising, try and be faithful from one moment to the next. That’s all I can try and do, otherwise you go crazy.’
This story was commissioned for – and appeared in – the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues 25th anniversary program. Photo of Enrico Rava provided […] Read More
Magnusson describes his latest project, Kinfolk (with Tim Neal on Hammond organ, Dave Beck on drums and Frank DiSario on bass), as ‘kind of rootsy’, reflecting the fact that he grew up playing the blues. ‘It’s not like I’m trying to start a blues band, but I love the colours of those sorts of grooves,’ he adds.
So by the time he turned 20 his palm was etched with a future as both player and composer, as jazz artist and classical. This puts Isaacs in a very select company – Don Banks, Bruce Cale, Phil Treloar, Mike Nock and Paul Grabowksy come to mind – of Australian artists whose work has been taken seriously in both idioms, and he sees the twin careers as being mutually beneficial.