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Andrea Keller: Flicker & Polar Bird
by John Fenton
Andrea Keller's recorded output is bold, original and engaging; this recent album is no exception. Flicker & Polar Bird is a double album and her twenty-third release as a leader. The album is the result of her time as the Coombs Creative Arts Fellow in 2022 and also features various commissions undertaken between 2010 and 2022. Keller is one of Australia's finest pianists, composers and arrangers, winning numerous prestigious awards and widespread recognition. She is an active educator in many ...
read moreVanessa Perica Orchestra: The Eye is the First Circle
by Barry O'Sullivan
The music on The Eye is the First Circle is undeniably outstandingly composed and arranged by Vanessa Perica. Her second outing--following Love is A Temporary Madness (Self released, 2020)--with another supersonic ensemble, it was superbly recorded at the Sing Sing East Studios in Melbourne, showcasing numerous flawlessly performed solos by some of Australia's best improvising musicians. The bandleader, composer and arranger has created explosively expressionistic charts which would bring out the best in any orchestra. Perica utilises the chosen voices ...
read moreVanessa Perica Orchestra: The Eye is the First Circle
by Jack Bowers
In a review of Love Is a Temporary Madness, the debut recording by Australian composer/arranger Vanessa Perica, the observation was made that Perica's impact in the realm of big-band jazz should be anything but temporary." Perica's second album, The Eye Is the First Circle, has added an exclamation point to that assertion. Again, each of the album's seven numbers was written and arranged by Perica. And again, she has shown that she deserves to be in the ...
read moreBarry Deister: Hemispheres
by Jack Bowers
Tenor saxophonist Barry Deister labels his sextet on Hemispheres a Collective, and for good reason--two of the musicians on Deister's fourth album are from the U.S., the others from Melbourne, Australia. Although the way they managed to work that magic isn't spelled out in the album's notes, the group performs seamlessly on seven of Deister's original compositions, which would seem to indicate that everyone was in the same studio in Preston, Australia, when the session was recorded in February 2023. ...
read moreVanessa Perica: Love is a Temporary Madness
by Jack Bowers
Even as the year 2020 has slid ignobly into the dustbin of history, music-lovers have been buoyed by a number of encouraging signs that the future of big-band jazz is in capable hands. While splendid recordings by old hands Mike Barone, Steve Spiegl, Mark Masters and Maria Schneider have helped keep the flame burning brightly, their customary artistry has been rivaled if not surpassed this year by relative newcomers such as Jeremy Levy, Seth Weaver, Lisa Maxwell, Jon Schapiro, Dennis ...
read moreVanessa Perica Orchestra: Love is a Temporary Madness
by Angelo Leonardi
Da Melbourne ci giunge quest'impressionante debutto orchestrale di Vanessa Perica, bandleader e compositrice che guida una formazione con i migliori jazzmen australiani di nuova generazione. Anche se geograficamente distante dal nostro emisfero, il jazz prodotto in Australia e Nuova Zelanda ha sempre mantenuto connessioni con le tendenze e le espressioni nate negli Stati Uniti, esprimendo notevoli musicisti come i pianisti Mike Nock e Chris Abrahams, i batteristi Tony Buck e Ben Vanderwal, il chitarrista Tony Barnard, il ...
read moreThe Andrea Keller Quartet: Angels and Rascals
by Bev Stapleton
British blues enthusiasts often reflect on how, in the '50s and early '60s, they chanced upon what seemed like music from another planet. Tracks heard on crackly US service radio frequencies, or the acquisition of the occasional record brought in by a merchant seaman uncle, opened up worlds of sound that bore no relation to what the BBC or local dance halls were offering.
It can be a bit like that for those of us in Europe or the States ...
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