2024 Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival: Hear the Future [Advertorial]

The 2024 Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival (SIWJF) will feature over 60 global and local artists across seven Sydney venues this Spring, from October 24th to November 3rd. Now in its 13th year, SIMA has championed groundbreaking artistic innovation and diversity featuring the leading women in jazz.

Ellen Kirkwood & Sirens Big Band – [A]part: massive in every way

And that from anguish to giddy silliness, and everything in between is the scope of [A]part. It is a massive piece in every way: challenging to the ear and the mind, highly original (as we know Kirkwood to always be), often cerebral and abstract, all the time threatening to be too much to take in in one sitting. But what saves it from possible overwhelm is that Kirkwood never loses the emotional thread in the music; it is human music and it consistently makes you feel. Sometimes, as with all valid contemporary art, those feelings can be baffling or even plain uncomfortable, but you do feel them deeply.

Listening to Emma Stephenson’s Hieronymus Trio w. Gian Slater – Where the Rest of the World Begins

Slater’s voice is a perfect choice for the Trio and Stephenson’s songs. Bell-clear, it is a fluid thing, like smoke or drifting water, avoiding any grating blues edges or forced earthiness. It is this instrumental quality a hallmark of all valid jazz singing that fits so neatly with the modern angles and curves of Stephenson’s compositions