Eugene Ball: ‘Let’s face it, musicians just want to make music!’

“The Ball Hanlon Schulz trio is a vehicle for developing pieces that, while fundamentally about facilitating improvisation, sit more in the chamber music world than the jazz paradigm. Of course, neither of us are denying our ‘roots’ – there are pieces in the repertoire that are, in essence, jazz ballads, for instance – but the trio is a space for us to try out ideas that don’t necessarily fit in the context of the music made by some of the other ensembles with which we perform.”

AAO 20th Anniversary Concert Series 5-7 November 2014

20Up sees the AAO return to the place of its first concert: the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne. A total of twenty-five musicians will perform a range of works from Ringing the Bell Backwards, the first work written for the AAO by Founding AD Paul Grabowsky which premiered at Malthouse in 1994; Passion, which is the AAO’s take on Bach’s St Matthew Passion; Testimony, Sandy Evans’ extraordinary tribute to Charlie Parker; Struttin’, Eugene Ball’s impressionistic take on Louis Armstrong, and a brand new commission from young composer, Austin Buckett called Virtuoso Pause.