The 2025 Melbourne International Jazz Festival again left the jazz audience spoilt for choice, leaving them with some hard choices to make between so many international and local acts.
The 2025 Melbourne International Jazz Festival again left the jazz audience spoilt for choice, leaving them with some hard choices to make between so many international and local acts.
Few musicians in Naarm/ Melbourne are as unpredictable as Solune. Now she’s back with Mad Vantage, a mind-blowing, take-no-prisoners blend of groove-centric nu-jazz and prog metal.
“The show serves for a moment of escapism, where we get to dress up and play a person that would otherwise no longer exist. The interesting twist though, which makes me realise how far we’ve come since the 1940s, is that an all-female band would never have been dreamed of in that era.”
I have always loved horns and a big band sound so I wanted to inject that into the project. I also had to have piano because of the colour it provides. I was looking for a slightly theatric bent as well.
We all composed three tunes each for the album, having the other members in mind. There are a lot of different moods because we have different compositional styles. Maddie writes a lot of quirky, frantic compositions, still heavily rhythmically driven, with lots of space for free improvisation and Isaac would write more traditional jazz tunes with beautiful melodies. I care so much about rhythm and keeping time and groove, that in my compositions theres usually a lot of business in rhythmic patterns and ideas with very simple melodies.