Thanks for saving me, Ms Green, from a fate worse than deaf.
Category: Reviews
John Hardaker reviews ECILA | ECILA is a startling debut from an exciting new talent and a dazzling new ensemble. The gratifying part is that, here on their debut, we witness the beginning of a road that I truly hope will stretch far far into the future.
Amid the entertaining anecdotes we pick up on Barnard’s perspectives on his colleagues, his recordings and his idols, including Louis Armstrong, the first encounter with whom he describes as ‘possibly the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me’.
‘a strange and beautiful world conjured among the bricks and grime, the litter and the 7-11 stores’
‘… an intriguing mixture of sound and rhythm…’
A bright weaver’s shuttle flashes back and forth,
east-west
Rumi from “Where Are We?”
12 tracks, a round dozen. As the product of an ex-Triosk drummer and a musician of the Fourth Way this seems just right.
On the strength of his eponymous debut album, Steve Barry, I get the feeling we will have to do as we did with the Finn brothers and Rusty Crowe (and any other frighteningly talented Kiwi) and willingly refer to him as the Australian pianist and composer Steve Barry. The album really is that good.
His ideas are clear and strong, and deceptively simple motifs unfold and develop in unexpected ways, always maintaining the listener’s interest. Suite SIMA is a model of how to write for a medium-sized jazz ensemble that will provide student composers and arrangers with many lessons and lots of inspiration.
Don Jordan | Keep going, don’t look down, keep going, don’t look back, keep going – until it is too late and we are swallowed up in the inferno.