I started playing jazz after discovering a VHS labelled ‘Red Dwarf’ at home when I was 14. Little did I know the last hour of the tape was a concert of Miles Davis live in Germany in 1988. I’d never heard anything like it and was totally blown away. I became obsessed with jazz.
The Life Electric is of its time but is also of the tradition of jazz. PW Farrell has caught the balance of both deftly – not an easy thing to do: too many have failed by tipping too far one way or another.
Rivett has broken cover not with yet another musical artefact from a schooled and accomplished improvising musician, but with a true work of the imagination.
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.
Carl Morgan responds to the Jazz Australia Q&A, featuring finalists in the National Jazz Awards. The National Jazz Awards are performed and announced at the […] Read More
