extempore and the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues have collaborated with National Jazz Award winners from every year of the festival since it began. The result is this eclectic set of souvenir postcards from some of our most creative musicians.
I love playing for festival crowds. Everyone has taken time out and is immersed in music for a few days and there is a lot of energy in that fact. I’m looking forward to telling my story with jazz guitar and enjoying the opportunity to play alongside the other top young players in the country. From what I know of the other guys, everyone is a monster player and expresses a diverse representation of the broad ‘jazz guitar’ genre.
Alex says: “I always love these opportunities to come back to my country, whose influence filters into my music in so many ways. It has also directly inspired several of my compositions, most recently the Place to Be track ‘Cuttagee, Wapengo’, which comes from fond memories of the NSW Far South Coast.”
Applications open Are you a Victorian jazz composer under the age of 35? PBS 106.7FM and the Melbourne International Jazz Festival are delighted to announce […] Read More
One day I came across a jazz guitar lesson and I enjoyed it so much that I made a decision then and there that I wanted to play jazz. I think it was a ‘moment’. Jazz and I had a ‘moment’. Haha
Colin [Elmer, Angus’ teacher] explained that ‘jazz’ was an extremely broad term and that eventually I would find an artist that I connected with. A few CDs later I was introduced to Wes Montgomery. This was the game changer. From that moment on, I was hooked on jazz.
Each year since 2005, in the month leading up to the jazz festival in Wangaratta, Miriam Zolin interviews the finalists in the National Jazz Awards. […] Read More
The jazz thing started in high school for me. I remember one morning in roll call, a very close friend showed me a recording of Pat Metheny playing ‘Have You Heard’. I was about 13 and had really only been flirting with the guitar up until then. Magic! I was instantly addicted to it.
When I first came to Sydney as a vocal student, Jonathan Zwartz really took me under his wing, giving me the opportunity to perform with him and introducing me to many great Sydney musicians. In more recent times I’ve been playing (and getting into trouble) with great jazz pianist Gerard Masters, which has been an incredible learning curve.
The line-up for the 2014 Mildura Jazz Food and Wine festival program includes The Cope Street Parade, Origami, Peter Hooper Quartet, Maryborough Traditional Jazz Ensemble, Double A Jazz, Mr Jazz, Don Mayne Trio, Grab Ya Cat and Nicola Milan.
