June 2000

Notes from
Down Under
Archive

2 0 0 1 April February 2 0 0 0 December October August June April

Bernie McGann Photos
by Bruce Hart

By Shane Nichols

Table of Contents:
Bela Fleck Visit with Victor Wooten
Katrine Madsen’s Tour
Bernie McGann Photo Exhibition by Bruce Hart
Bernie McGann Artist Profile
Renee Geyer Book Saga
SIMA and Tour Chit Chat

Best banjo, bass?

“Best in the world” was a term being slung around in late April. It referred to Bela Fleck’s phenomenal electric bass player Victor Wooten and to guitarist Junior Brown, both of whom were Down Under at Easter for the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival in the far north of New South Wales.

Wooten’s solo spot was a suite of Misty, hinted at in fragile harmonics, moving into Amazing Grace, similarly delicate until he drew a line across it and brought it back as a grungy boogie, and then Caravan, a camel derby run along a precipice. Reaching over and from below the instrument, Wooten’s hands and fingers danced in and out of each other high up on the neck in a tarantella of interlaced fingering. It seemed as though the picking and fretting hands might actually change places – and, for a moment, they really did. But this was more than a display of awesome technique. Wooten’s musicality shone through, a sense of killer opportunism alongside a knowledge and respect of the tunes. He deconstructed these monuments, explored them and then put them back on the shelf.

Fleck, of course, is a gunslinger too. He demonstrated a virtuosity that everyone had come to see, given that few people play the instrument, in Australia anyway, and even fewer play well. It could be that no one plays it as well as Fleck. Raised in New York, Fleck has taken the banjo forever out of its rural straitjacket and planted it firmly downtown. He plays everything on it – up to and including straightahead jazz, bluegrass, polkas and anything else that might take his fancy. His electrified banjo playing reminds one of Pat Metheny’s sound and style.

A great Dane: Katrine Madsen does the rounds

Danish singer Katrine Madsen made her debut trip Down Under in April, under the auspices of Henk van Leeuwen, a Melbourne-based jazz promoter who specialises in Scandinavian jazz. Madsen, a mainstream jazz artist with a beautifully husky voice and wily sense of timing, has about four albums behind her, of which the most recent, a collection of ballads called You Are So Beautiful, was released in Australia by van Leeuwen. Even so, she was coming here cold. No one would have heard of her, so a tour that took in the major centres (except Sydney, where the most likely venue baulked at her lack of pofile here) and far flung small towns was a brave venture indeed.

It seems to have paid off.

“It was a great tour,” van Leeuwen says. “It finished actually last Saturday (6/5) in the Philippines with standing ovations. Before that Katrine Madsen (vocals), Jesper Bodilsen (bass), Lars Moller (tenor-sax), Jan Lundgren (piano), and Morten Lund (drums) gave 13 terrific concerts around Australia in intimate to theatrical surroundings in Melbourne, Surfers Paradise, Brisbane, Kuranda (far north Queensland), Canberra, Shearwater (northern Tasmania), Hobart, Perth, Kalgoorlie and Adelaide. These gigs were really without exception all quite enthusiastically received. The reason: the singer was warm, fresh, beautifully phrased, with a great sense of timing and space and her band was absolutely hip and really tuned in to each other.

“Each musician is a well established, in-demand player in Denmark and Sweden in their own right, and Katrine deserved [success] having brought together such a talented and utterly professional jazz band.

“Without a doubt the Danish band had a really good time in Australia: they enjoyed Melbourne’s cosmopolitan downtown atmosphere, the Gold Coast ocean swim and beach, far north Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef and Rainforest, the drive across Tasmania, Hobart’s Salamanca waterfront (and one of the best gigs in the whole tour in a packed Temple Place Club), Subiaco in Perth, Kalgoorlie gold mining country culture (went down the mine), the India-Pacific train journey across the Nullarbor desert, and the country-city feel of Adelaide on a Sunday. It was just such a shame we had to miss out on Sydney, but the opportunities there for internationals to perform in venues with audience potential are quite limited these days, unless the promoter goes for a big self-staged venue.

“Never have I seen so many people after a gig who wanted to by the CDs on the spot. So, yes, Australia made a big and lasting impression on the Danes and their jazzers most certainly made once again a definite impact here with a very high standard of musicianship.”

In the Melbourne Age newspaper, writer Leon Gettler reported on April 18 that “at Bennett’s Lane, the launching pad for her Australian tour, there were moments where the excitement and joy twanged and reverberated through the room like stretched wire. . . the most striking thing about this family [of musicians] was the constant buzz of small interactions and sub-texts through the night . . . To call her phrasing sharp would be an understatement . . . Madsen has a knack for counting the beat so slowly, giving her all the time in the world to stretch a word here and there and create a new space with perfect poise and rhythm without any need for filigrees or extras.”

The public funded national broadcaster, ABC Radio National, recorded the final Melbourne concert (very full Danish Club on May 1), which, according to Henk, will go to air in early June. You could also take a look at Katrine’s site on www.katrine-madsen.dk/ Van Leeuwen has more in the pipeline (check his website : www.ozemail.com.au/~ozeurjaz/) with another Danish/Swedish combination, Trine-Lise Vaering (vocals) and Fredrik Lundin (alto sax), leading a five-piece band a with Swedish rhythm section. Trio Toykeat from Finland to Denmark/Holland/Belgium in September, followed by Chile/Brazil/Argentina, and late January/early February, Danish bass ace Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen returns to Australia with his Trio. Further out are budding plans to bring Danish trumpet/composer/conductor Palle Mikkelborg to Australia in 2001 in a classical/contemporary setting.

US guitarist Mike Stern will be a visitor in early June, playing at the Basement in Sydney in the footsteps of Kurt Elling who visited in early May and is getting to be a regular in these parts. US saxophonist Phillip Johnston, a denizen of the Knitting Factory scene, will appear at the Side On Café, Sydney, for the Sydney Improvised Music Association on June 24 with a quality local pick up band that includes Sandy Evans (soprano and tenor saxes), Alister Spence (piano), Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Dave Goodman (drums). Should be a really interesting gig.

Also touring in June is Sydney-based pianist and composer Mark Isaacs and his quintet On Reflection. The two-week Australian tour precedes the international release of their second CD Closer on Naxos Jazz in October. The group, formed in late 1997, was featured in the 1998 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz.

Isaac’s heading out with a worthy bunch of sidemen: Saxophonist Tim Hopkins has recorded five CDs as featured artist/composer and has toured extensively both in Australia and overseas. Virtuoso guitarist James Muller at 25 is one of the most talked-about musicians in the country, with his second CD All Out being released on ABC Music to loud acclaim. 23-year-old bassist Brett Hirst maintains a busy schedule as a member of the Vince Jones Band, the Mike Nock Trio and several other first-rank groups. Drummer Hamish Stuart is a veteran of Australian music-making, having played with famous names too numerous to mention in jazz, rock, and soul.

Isaacs works with equal ease in both the classical concert-hall and the jazz/improvisation musical traditions. He has a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in the USA and in 1996 the Australia Council awarded him a two-year Fellowship. As a concert composer, he has been commissioned to compose pieces for major classical ensembles including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australia Ensemble, Synergy, Seymour Group, Perihelion, Sydney String Quartet and the Sydney Metropolitan Opera Company. In June 1994 Mark played the premiere of his own piano concerto in St Petersburg Philharmonic Hall with the St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra. Such is his versatility that within hours of this concerto performance he performed in a major jazz festival in the same city. Mark was a prize-winner in the 1st Tokyo International Competition for Chamber Music Composition (1996) and received a commendation in the University of Melbourne's 1997 Albert H. Maggs Composition Prize. His most recent major work is a 45-minute oratorio based on the Joan of Arc story with a libretto by Sydney writer John Shand. Entitled Voices, Mark conducted its premiere performance with over 1000 performers in the Sydney Opera House in April 1997.

He has released many CD recordings of his compositions, improvisations and jazz piano performances and he has performed and/or recorded with, amongst other international and Australian jazz greats, Dave Holland, Roy Haynes, Kenny Wheeler, Paul Grabowsky, Dale Barlow and Shelley Scown. Isaacs has toured Russia three times as well as other tours in Asia, the Pacific and regional Australia. He is also an experienced composer for television, has also had considerable experience conducting his own music, including directing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. TOUR DATES: MELBOURNE June 16 & 17 Bennetts Lane Jazz Lab. GOLD COAST June19 Southport Yacht Club. KIAMA June 24 Showground Pavilion. ADELAIDE June 25 Stamford Plaza Hotel. PERTH June 26 Hyde Park Hotel. HOBART June 28 Temple Place. BURNIE June 29 Burnie Town House. SYDNEY June 30 & July 1 Side On Café.

For more info contact: e-mail: gracemusic@bigpond.com website: www.listen.to/gracemusic

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Bernie McGann

It seems like he’s been around forever, and in fact Bernie McGann has been lauded in the Australian jazz scene since the early ’60s. But while his pre-eminence is assured, May was special. It was Bernie McGann month, in Sydney at least. The great altoist was the subject of a photo exhibition 10 years in the making, an onstage/backstage collaboration with noted Sydney photographer Bruce Hart that sought to reveal a lot about the musician’s existence, in moments of artistic creation and the concomitant struggle to make ends meet as a creative musician. There in 55 images that constitute “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Bernie McGann . . . A Life in Jazz” was a portrait of a great artist cum ordinary man. This dialectic between extraordinary and ordinary is resolved in the word “artist” – the artist playing, the artist backstage having a quiet fag and a beer with his cohorts. The point is driven home by the occasional caption under certain images: “Some nights the band outnumbered the audience”; and “The average jazz musicians earns $20,000 a year.”

The truly democratic nature and demotic character of jazz has been saliently written about by people like Stanley Crouch. In the taciturn and almost self-effacing McGann, there is the perfect conflation of jazz man as hero and ordinary man. This is bound to be true of jazz artists all over the globe, but in the deeply ingrained egalitarianism of the Australian soul it rings especially true.

It was a point tellingly made by Sydney Improvised Music Association chairman Peter Rechniewski, who, in opening the exhibition, spoke of its success in depicting not only McGann but the Sydney jazz scene as well. McGann’s effect on those around him. “When you’re around a great artist like Bernie, his ability to organise the ordinary into something special opens your eyes to these wonders.”

The exhibition, at Stills Gallery in Paddington (www.stillsgallery.com.au) , closes on June 3. McGann is due to play at SIMA’s venue, the Side On Café, on Friday, June 16 and Saturday, June 17 (with trombonist James Greening on the 16th and saxophonist Sandy Evans on the 17th ), backed by Lloyd Swanton (bass) and John Pochée (drums).

ARTIST PROFILE: Bernie McGann, alto saxophone.

Bernie McGann would have been a metal worker had music not altered his course. Born in 1937, McGann went to a working class school and on graduation served an apprenticeship as a metal worker. At the same time he played drums occasionally for his father, who was a part-time musician. He dropped the drums for the alto, influenced particularly by Paul Desmond and then Charlie Parker, and rapidly developed the expansive, organic sound and concept that are his trademark.

The sound is something people cannot ignore. It is an excoriating thing that puts a lump in some people’s throat while others – including some indignant jazz musicians in the early days - are driven to anger. It’s as dry as bark and with the same texture, grainy and flecked, sometimes cracking into split notes cunningly aimed to ride the overtones from ringing cymbals or piano or whatever. This edifice has not only brilliant cupolas and shaded corners, but is in its hulking wholeness a thing of majesty and beauty once the listener’s ears attune themselves. Of course, some never do. . . Ugly Beauty, the Monk tune that is also the name of one of McGann’s albums, describes it perfectly.

Trying to eschew the banalities of the musician’s life, McGann only added to his mystique when he moved to the sleepy seaside town of Bundeena, on the southern edge of Sydney in a beautiful national park. He raised his family and for years was the town postman, in his own time retreating into the wilderness surrounding the town to practice in the open air.

That cathedral of sky did its bit to develop his already huge sound and style, so that even the extremes of the horn yielded to his control. Hearing Bernie practising in the upper register, en plein air, has persuaded even skilled musicians they were hearing a soprano sax being taxed.

McGann eventually moved back to Sydney and playing full time. His longevity and high standing mean that over the years he has maintained a devoted coterie of followers while being discovered in waves of fresh appreciation by new generations of cognoscenti, inner-city art school types, rural alternative types, almost anyone with a nose for quality in the non-institutional culture.

Scandalously non-recorded until the 1980s and the advent of a prolific local recording scene that is now flourishing, The Bernie McGann Trio’s recordings are Ugly Beauty, McGann McGann, Playground (all on Rufus) and Bundeena. A new album is due out on the Rufus label around July (email rufusrecords@one.net.au).

Reviewing Susan Gai Dowling’s CD, Rent Party (Rufus), for the Cadence journal, Jerome Wilson wrote “the most distinctive voice here belongs to the amazing alto player Bernie McGann showing his dazzling style of pinched, vocalised bop lines with elements of Desmond, Konitz, Rollins and Lake. He’s only on half the CD, but when he’s around he dominates. . . If this guy was American he would have reached 'next big thing' status years ago.”

In his introductory notes to the Bruce Hart exhibition, writer, jazz critic, and longtime McGann advocate John Clare said: “A great artist is among us. He goes about his practice. He is not much of a self-promoter. Those who follow him hear fresh ideas still emerging in his playing, sometimes in startling profusion. To many of us he is still a mystery.” (Reading: Bernie McGann . . . A Life In Jazz, by Geoff page (Kardoorair Press, 1997, Armidale, NSW, Australia).

Something I said?

There was a sequel to my column in April, one of those things that the internet facilitiates like nothing else. I mentioned in passing that singer Renee Geyer had been in the line-up for the 3rd Melbourne International Jazz Festival at the start of the year. The reference was spotted by Chris Sonnenberg of Virginia who emailed me in late April asking if I had any contact numbers for Renee. Sonnenberg told me that back in the early 1970s he had been guitarist in a band called Sun, in which Renee was singer. This was in Melbourne, Australia and believe me, then, as now, American jazz/rock guitarists were pretty thin on the ground. Anyway, Chris had lost contact with his old band mates over the years and was interested in getting in touch with Renee. I told him I would make inquiries and would pretty likely be able to help him out with a contact number of some kind.

The next day I was at the Basement for the Bela Fleck gig and as always I got immersed in the venue’s flyer publicising the events for the month ahead. There before my eyes was the uncanny news that Renee Geyer – who, it must be said, has hardly been a news item Down Under for some years, as much as she is esteemed and affectionately held in public regard – was going to launch her new book at the Basement on May 5.

Well, well.

A day or two later her book, Confessions of a Difficult Woman, turned up at my office at the Financial Review – there’s been a spate of revelatory writings by Baby Boomer rock heroes Down Under in the past year or so, a final fling at celebrity in most cases and poorly written to boot - and I was able to read her version of the Sun days, among other things, including her remarks about the “good American guitarist” in the band.

I passed all this on to Sonnenberg, with whom I had by then exchanged a few lengthy emails discussing Sun, and in particular, one Keith Shadwick, the jazz-loving tenor player and founder of the band. I hadn’t seen Sun play but in the mid-70s I saw Shadwick a few times and with a few other people in the jazz scene often pondered why Keith didn’t quit rock and move into jazz more solidly. His jazz chops, it must be said, let him bring something out of the ordinary compared with run of the mill rock sax players back then. His fluid phrasing across the beat was really exciting and solid in a way a lot of rock sax players in those days simply weren’t capable of.

I knew that Shadwick had moved to England many years ago and that was basically the last I heard of him. Oh, there was a Keith Shadwick writing books about jazz, including the extremely useful Gramophone Good Jazz CD Guide, which he edited. Surely not the same Keith, though, in a country of 55 million . . .

Well, Sonnenberg’s insight into Shadwick’s provenance made me rethink. And in Geyer’s book she mentions how Shadwick later moved to England and ran a music book store. Ok, so it very likely is the same Keith involved with Gramophone’s jazz guide. After Sonnenberg’s side of the story, it was easy to understand how Shadwick’s expert status came about. Sonnenberg lived in Melbourne for a year with Shadwick and his brother, being schooled comprehensively in the contents of their 3,000 jazz LPs. The Shadwick brothers’ collection, Sonnenberg says, paled beside their father’s jazz collection. “It was the best year of my life,” Sonnenberg says of his informal year’s tuition.

No wonder Keith’s writing jazz guides - he cut his teeth on this willing American captive. Sonnenberg has been able to get in touch with Geyer since he contacted me; in fact he phoned her as a surprise on the same day she launched her book.

Show us the money

The government’s money is as good – maybe better – than anyone’s. With state funding, the jazz community retains better control over its product and its practices, rather than corporate sponsors or some other entity. That’s part of the thinking behind the Sydney Improvised Music Association’s push in New South Wales for funding from the Ministry for the Arts for a fully funded jazz venue.

Such a venue, modelled on some European examples, particularly the Bimhuis in Amsterdam and the Copenhagen Jazz Centre, would create a more secure and nurturing environment for jazz artists, according to SIMA president and artistic director Peter Rechniewski. He says SIMA has been keen on the idea ever since an overseas study tour of such venues was made in the 1980s by the federal and NSW Jazz Co-Ordination officer, Eric Myers. Rechniewski says that the NSW Government has accepted that such a venue is called for and that the plans really have a chance of coming to fruition. That’s great news for jazz, not only in New South Wales.

Meanwhile, at the current SIMA headquarters, the Side On Café, Rechniewski plans a series of jams in coming months involving a mix of youthful and veteran rhythm units, as a learning exercise. The project will be a collaboration with the Jazz Groove Association, a Sydney-based collective.

Next up from Notes From Down Under...

• The one after this will include Bruce Johnson’s book, the Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Modernity
• Reviews of Mike Nock’s small big band at the Side On Café
• Artist Profile of Mike Nock
• A local album, probably Bernie McGann’s new disc, and maybe some others
• Perhaps a profile of Rufus, our biggest local jazz label (50 titles in 10 years), founded and run by ex-priest Tim Dunn
• Tour news