“Playing double bass and electric bass, Elsen Price invites us to join him as he rides the rivers, enters the woods, explores luminescent caverns and encounters freakish bees (buzzing included) in what could easily be categorised as eight mini-suites, each of three movements.”
A great deal of art is description, or at least representation. Describing or representing love, hate, the universe. None is the right description. Nor the wrong one. This is art after all.
In a program of jazz, blues, a touch of hillbilly bluegrass and a dash of gospel, Dianne Cripps shared some of her experiences growing up in the South, regaling the audience with stories and explaining why particular songs were special to her.
Steeped in introspection and deep focus, Stone Echidna has fashioned a musical landscape that demands patience and effort from the listener, asking that we leave our musical baggage at the door, and embrace the unfamiliar. Only with repeated listening does the drama and beauty inherent within this music fully reveal itself.
“[Elysian Fields’] aim of creating a beautiful recording has well and truly been achieved, and once our lives return to some semblance of normality following the emergence of the virus that has shaken the world, ‘Fika’ will indeed bring people together.”
Pavlidis’ approach to improvisation is equal parts spontaneity and structure.
Andrea Keller’s piano is central to her Transients trios, a thing of wonder that binds together these conversations with her fellow musicians.
To say that drummer Kyrie Anderson and bassist Alana Dawes create a firm backbone that allows singer and bandleader Kate Fuller to shine, singing with clarity and confidence, would be an understatement.
Of Deities and Demons grew directly out of AAO Artistic Director Peter Knight’s meeting with drummer and Baliphonics leader Samudi Suraweera during a visit Knight made to Sri Lanka. The conversations and the friendship that grew between these two musicians led to the idea of meshing the experimental inclinations of the AAO with the yak bera (demon drum), and other traditional instruments of Sri Lanka.
But of course, this is a band overflowing with imaginative musicians. Jenny Eriksson’s electric viola da gamba is the anchor around which the good ship Elysian Fields sails. She was clearly enjoying herself onstage, relaxed and on fire.
