What makes Ally Hocking Howe’s EP ‘The Feather Came First’ a great listen is not the music itself, but the promise it carries: the promise of a great composer, and a great musician, who can mover through genres and blend elements from all sorts of sources to create something new
“Hilary Geddes is equally comfortable using her guitar to evoke ambient spacious soundscapes as she is weaving single note melodies through complex chord changes, generating raucous energy through angular lines and overdriven rock solos.”
With these two recent albums, one solo piano, another an ensemble project, Keyna Wilkins shows something of her style and musical imagination.
For an album filled with gems of the Great American Songbook, it is telling that the songs that mostly stand out are Tamara Kuldin’s original compositions. ‘Maisie’s song’ in particular, has all it takes to become a modern classic – a sweet, catchy melody; simple, honest lyrics; a warm, compelling delivery by a vocalist at the top of her game.
“Playing double bass and electric bass, Elsen Price invites us to join him as he rides the rivers, enters the woods, explores luminescent caverns and encounters freakish bees (buzzing included) in what could easily be categorised as eight mini-suites, each of three movements.”
A great deal of art is description, or at least representation. Describing or representing love, hate, the universe. None is the right description. Nor the wrong one. This is art after all.
In a program of jazz, blues, a touch of hillbilly bluegrass and a dash of gospel, Dianne Cripps shared some of her experiences growing up in the South, regaling the audience with stories and explaining why particular songs were special to her.
Steeped in introspection and deep focus, Stone Echidna has fashioned a musical landscape that demands patience and effort from the listener, asking that we leave our musical baggage at the door, and embrace the unfamiliar. Only with repeated listening does the drama and beauty inherent within this music fully reveal itself.
“[Elysian Fields’] aim of creating a beautiful recording has well and truly been achieved, and once our lives return to some semblance of normality following the emergence of the virus that has shaken the world, ‘Fika’ will indeed bring people together.”
Pavlidis’ approach to improvisation is equal parts spontaneity and structure.
