Holly Moore: ‘I’m still figuring out my voice and my place’

Every time I see Holly Moore perform, I wish I’d been able to have seen more of her. To be exact, I wish I’d seen a performance between the one I’m attending at the time and the previous one I’d seen. Does this make sense?

What I mean is that she is so much better, more assertive, imaginative, sensitive, and daring every time, that I feel I missed a milestone in her growth as an artist. Today, Holly released a new album in the world, Flood. It features compositions created as part of her participation in the Melbourne International Jazz Festival’s groundbreaking Take Note program. Now that this work is being shared with the world, it seems very appropriate that she launches it at another female-empowering platform, the Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival.

What’s the album’s story?

Most of the tunes are from the commission I did for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival Take Note program in 2020: ‘Flood’ part I and part II, ‘Under the Cobblestones, the Beach‘, ‘Ballad for the People‘ were from that. The other tunes on the record were also written around the same time.

Generally it’s quite a somber album. It was a response to what was going on at the time, the lockdowns, the bushfires, the floods… I wrote it in this house I was living in with a few friends in lockdown, where I couldn’t play my saxophone, because I had neighbors that were screaming at me, they would totally lose it. I was just playing really quietly when I could, and mainly I wrote it all on piano. It was a strange way to write music, having to be so quiet the whole time.

I actually ended up renting a storage unit with a bunch of drummers in Thornbury. I would drive there and practice. I would book it for two hours, so I’d go in and have to get stuff done — this made my practice very focused.

I guess it was all kind of a response to having lived in New York and coming back. I was trying to figure out all the music that I had listened to over there, and all the music that I had missed from Australia. I’d been listening to lots and lots of different music and I started writing as a response to all of that.

When I started writing this music, there had been a lot going on, I was moving around a lot, I really didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going to be settled at the time.

I had moved three times in six months, I was moving around a lot; I had gone back to America in March of 2020 and then came straight back home because of the lockdowns.

I wrote ‘Fresh Air‘ when I got back from New York; I wasn’t super happy to be back in Melbourne, I really loved New York so much and I was just trying to find the positive things about being back. I was like: “well, there;s fresh air” and so I wrote it. It’s a simple, happy little tune and I was like: “that’s a good thing about Melbourne”, something I could focus on.

Tell me a little bit about that experience in New York.

I moved there on a graduate student visa after I did honors at VCA. I always loved New York, but it wasn’t really achievable to try and get into a school over there, so I just went on this graduate visa, and I worked hospitality jobs, and I just went to gigs every night. I was out all the time, and I met a really amazing community really quickly, and I developed a lot of really great friendships that I still have.

I heard so much music all the time in New York, and it got me back into practicing again and playing, I just like felt so inspired!

I was there for a little more than a year, and it seems like such a short amount of time, but it was so pivotal for me.

What did you miss the most from Melbourne while you were there?

I missed the Australian jazz sound, which I’m still kind of trying to figure out what exactly it is, but I would be walking around and be like: “oh I really want to listen to Andrea Keller or Julien Wilson!” I needed to hear the music that I had grown up with here in Melbourne; it’s very specific to this place. I really missed having that very intentional playing, whereas over there, there were lots of incredible instrumentalists, really amazing at their instrument, this was so inspiring. There are amazing things about both places.

How did you choose the band for Flood?

I wanted to play with friends at that time. The 2020 Jazz Festival was online, I wanted to play with people I knew and felt comfortable with. I studied with most of them, so I’ve known them since I was a child. I knew that they would like make the music sound really good and they knew how to interpret what I was going for, and do justice to what I’m hearing in my head.

How is Flood related to your previous album, Reunion?

I actually wrote and recorded Flood first. I’ve done it backwards, in sense of timing. I didn’t really know what I was doing with this record and then I got an ABC Commission last year for Reunion, and I ended up releasing Flood with Namboku records, which is a community label in Japan with ties to Melbourne. It has been really great to have everyone on board, it all kind of just fell into place really quickly.

Reunion, to my ears, sounds like it has more angles and spikes, whereas this one is more supple and curvy; I’m afraid I don’t have a better way to describe it.

I think you are spot on. When I wrote and recorded this one, I wasn’t very stable in my life and I was pretty depressed. I think the record demonstrates that — it’s slow, there’s a lot of texture, it’s exploring things a little bit more, but in a really soft way. I felt quite soft at the time, but when I wrote Reunion, I just felt more confident and stable and I’ve been exploring things a little bit more, it’s maybe a little more angular.

So what you’re describing to me is you finding your feet after your time in New York and then becoming more assertive and finding your voice as an artist; how did you get to that?

It’s quite silly, but honestly, my time in the storage unit was a very intense time of practice. I went there most days and did very focused two-three hours of work, so it felt like a period where I’ve developed a lot; it was a big moment for me. I definitely got some new language and new ideas and confidence from that.

The other thing would be when last year, I started playing with Aaron Choulai, when he came back to Melbourne; that was another really pivotal step in my playing. I have been playing with his quintet and with the Australian Art Orchestra and I definitely feel a big development in my playing again.

I’m still figuring out my voice and my place. When I was working at the storage unit, I would be working on the fundamentals, transcribing solos and playing them really slowly every day, for months and months. That really made an impact in my playing. I was really working on the things that I wasn’t good at, but now I am going into another period of lots of practice over summer, when I’m not teaching and I’m going to be focusing on things that think I am good at and trying to make them better.

Do you remember the first solo you ever transcribed?

The first thing that I transcribed would have been in high school. I was obsessed with Jan Garbarek, but I remember doing Tord Gustavsen’s, ‘The Child Within‘. I actually auditioned at Monash and VCA and went to all the auditions with that tune.

So your entry to jazz was through ECM? How did that work for you in high school? Did you have a hard time?

Haha, I know, what a nerd, right? I actually had a great time in high school — I mean, I wasn’t sharing what I was listening to, I would listen to my music on the bus with my iPod classic. I went to school in Brunswick, before it was an arty, cool kind of place, but I had some amazing music teachers there. I ended up getting private saxophone lessons from this really great classical saxophonist. He actually had a photo of Jan Garbarek on his wall; he had seen him in Europe, and he got this little poster and I was like: “wow, that guy looks crazy! I need to check him out!” I was impressed with his looks, his eyebrows, so I checked him out and I totally fell in love with his sound.

Then I was in this academic program at Melbourne Uni and they advertised this high school music program where teachers from the Juilliard School in New York came out and they taught an intensive week with high school students at one of the Melbourne Uni colleges. I had only done a little bit of jazz stuff but I applied and I got into that; they really took me in and were super supportive of me.

That’s where I met the players on the record: Paul Cornelius who plays tenor saxophone, Robbie Finch, the bass player, Kade Brown, the piano player, they all did this high school program as well. I was in year 11, so I would have been 16 years old; that’s when I went really deep into the music and started to find a music community because I didn’t have one at high school.

Have you faced gender-specific challenges in this journey?

Yes, definitely. I found university very challenging, for multiple reasons.

Studying music is very intense for anybody, it’s a pretty full on thing to do, but I definitely found it quite hard being one of the only women, and not getting that many opportunities to get better. I guess that’s probably the polite, diplomatic way to put it.

It’s been really hard to get to a point where what you need to get better is just a chance — it’s such a ridiculous thing, so I think with programs like Take Note and the Melbourne Women’s International Jazz Festival that Sonja Horbelt runs, there are people who have just been so supportive to me, to other women and to non-binary people.

These are such good, safe places for musicians like me, they really care about the music that we’re making, and they really see it as really valuable to nurture and support artists in ways that we maybe haven’t been supported before.

So it feels really special to have this album that has come from Take Note and be able to present it at the MWIJF with the support of Sonja. It feels like the right place to release the album.