The show was loud, celebratory, deliberate — it was the kind that reminds you what live music does to the human system. Ibrahim Maalouf made everyone in the club dance, sweat, jump and sing. “Sorry to those who came to listen to jazz,” he grinned near the end.
Halfway into this interview, Allana Goldsmith stopped talking; she welled up, and had to take a breath. She was talking about her effort to reclaim her language, being the first one in her family after generations to learn Maori. A magnificent vocalist, she is using her powerful instrument as a form of activism. Along with pianist Mark Baynes, they have created a hauntingly beautiful collection of songs, exploring the ways jazz — in all its iterations — can blend with Maori culture.
In 2009 Judy Bailey gave a long, insightful interview to Belinda Webster (of Tall Poppies records) for the second issue of ‘Extempore’ — the jazz journal which was this website’s predecessor — sharing her story, her discovery of the piano, of jazz, of improvisation; she also talks about her approach to teaching, her effort to bring jazz and classical music together, and she stresses the importance of ‘alert listening’.
“By paying attention to what I liked about my own playing and focusing on developing that, I naturally created a mash-up of everything I love about music. All the greatest players, recordings, and gigs I’ve experienced filter through me — and what I love about all of that became my voice, my sound.”
“I am lucky enough to have had a song or two written about me, but you will have to find them.”
“In reimagining this music we are able to uncover hidden depths and mine for musical gold. But importantly, and I think most importantly, the music is very, very fun.”
Another message the festival conveyed was that while in recent years, the jazz world has lost some of the giants of jazz such as Pharoah Sanders, Wayne Shorter, Ellis Marsalis and most recently Quincy Jones, jazz is being revitalised by players such Blanchard and harpist Brandee Younger, singers such as the innovative Jazzmeia Horn and Nicole Zuraitis, and drummers like Antonio Sanchez, who following his well-timed accompaniment to the film Birdman, showcased a dynamite solo.
“I love ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ so I play it a lot. It’s big, it’s small, it’s rhythmic, it’s rhapsodic, the themes are catchy and silly, and people always clap really loud at the end, which is fun, I do admit.”
What makes Ally Hocking Howe’s EP ‘The Feather Came First’ a great listen is not the music itself, but the promise it carries: the promise of a great composer, and a great musician, who can mover through genres and blend elements from all sorts of sources to create something new
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.
