“I wanted to do a tribute album, but I was very clear that it is not going to be just another cover of the original album. I have always wanted to record a sweet, clean, simplified but yet intricate rendition of the Nancy Wilson/ Cannonball Adderley album.”
How would you describe the dynamics of Torrio!?
Niko Schauble: Every input is welcome. Every output is celebrated. There is no leader. The direction becomes clear through the performance.
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.
The Wilfreds’ singing seems all the more urgent when it is riding atop a band that is in this state of what we might call restrained agitation. And it is this interplay that breeds that sense of mystery, where both parties are enriching the other’s tradition; when the Dreaming of the Yolngu people intermingles with Western flights of imagination; where any demarcation line between ritual and creativity is blown away in a sand-storm of sound.
This is a disc you should perhaps listen to casually at first, (perhaps while ironing your sheets or perhaps just your shirts) then return and take your place in this remarkably silent audience.
There is a calmness and beauty on much of this CD, typified by Saarelaht’s impressionistic solo introductions to three of the tracks, which testifies to the maturity and skill of all four musicians. Phil Sandford reviews Fiveways by the Jex Saarelaht Quartet
