Genius pianist Barney McAll dominates the shortlist, being featured in four categories with his visceral masterpiece, ‘Hearing the Blood’, while brilliant newcomer saxophonist Evan Harris follows with three nominations, each representing a different generation of Australian jazz.
Acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Tom OHalloran has received the Jazz Work of the Year award for Now Noise, an album composed for his group Memory of Elements (Moe), at the 2017 Art Music Awards
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And that from anguish to giddy silliness, and everything in between is the scope of [A]part. It is a massive piece in every way: challenging to the ear and the mind, highly original (as we know Kirkwood to always be), often cerebral and abstract, all the time threatening to be too much to take in in one sitting. But what saves it from possible overwhelm is that Kirkwood never loses the emotional thread in the music; it is human music and it consistently makes you feel. Sometimes, as with all valid contemporary art, those feelings can be baffling or even plain uncomfortable, but you do feel them deeply.
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“We’re seeing more women artists in jazz, but perhaps not at the rate we’re expecting. I think one of the biggest challenges is to encourage young players to pursue music at a tertiary level and beyond.”
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The idea was to foster a collaborative approach to the music making and invite the other musicians to contribute their compositions and favourite tunes as well, rather than me having complete control over the repertoire (as was the case in the Andrea Keller Quartet). By opening things up like this, there’s diversity to the music that otherwise wouldn’t exist to the same degree.
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“Keller’s harmonic sense throughout seems to have its own logic, following its path to places, once arrived at, are just where we want to be. Like all valid jazz writing, her compositional language seems to suit the soloists just fine, too”.
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Inspired and inspiring, sensitive, daring and insightful, Andrea Keller is one of the brightest stars of the Australian jazz and improvised music community. A restless creative spirit, the composer and pianist blends her influences in an exemplary tasteful and seamless manner and it comes as not much of a surprise that she is now joining …
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An exceptional album. Their previous album Moments In Time had a folkish feel to it. This one is different; it tells a story, a tale of collaboration between different cultures, South American and Asian, Middle Eastern and European, a blend of jazz, world music, pop and a bit of R&B. The result: a multi-layered cultural mix that can only be Australian
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From the media release The Australian Art Music Awards finalists have been announced. Among them (of course) are a number of Australian jazz musicians and organisations … Award for Excellence in Jazz Alister Spence and Myra Melford for Everything Here Is Possible Andrea Keller for the creation, release and presentation of three contemporary jazz projects …
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Over the 10 day duration of the festival I’d encountered orthodox jazz rhythms, experimental jazz and music that you could argue was not jazz at all. Had I selected a different schedule of artists, I may have had a totally different festival experience altogether, such was the variety of shows on offer.
