Adam Simmons

ADAM SIMMONS plays saxophones, clarinets, flutes, shakuhachi, fujara, toys and graduated from VCA in 1992. Since then, Adam has regularly worked in Melbourne, nationally and internationally with all manner of influential groups and artists including: Ernest Ranglin, Nigel Kennedy, Peter Brotzmann, John Hollenbeck, Jacek Kochan, Alessandra Garosi, Odean Pope, bucketrider, The Pearly Shells, BOLT Ensemble, Spiderbait, Zydeco Jump, Kutcha Edwards, Australian Art Orchestra, Gotye, Clocked Out, Tony Gould, Sandy Evans, Noriko Tadano, David Jones, Dave Brown, David Chesworth, Pugsley Buzzard and many more . Adam’s own ensembles include: Origami, Collider, La Societe des Antipodes (French/Australian), Adam Simmons Quartet, Adam Simmons Toy Band, Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble and New Blood.

Highlights from the past few years include: third (and final) Festival of Slow Music, launch of Shakuhachi Melbourne (a community ensemble), performed Nick Tsiavos 15hr Immersion at Dark MOFO, conducted a University of Melbourne engagement project with Kids off the Kerb, “100:25:1” performing duets with 100 different artists across 25 nights (with two research papers presented at jazz and social network conferences), released three CDs by Origami and five other CDs on his Fat Rain label, presented five major projects and released a 5 CD Box set as part of “The Usefulness of Art” 2017-18 concert series, was Lead Co-Artistic Director for Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues (2017-18) where he led the Wangaratta Horns of Death, a 60 piece community, in a special full set with Spiderbait, and has graduated from the 2017 intake for the Australia Council Arts Leaders Program.

Tags

Adam Simmons Adam Simmons, Origami, Saxophone, Melbourne, Australia, Free Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Chamber Jazz, Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Conduction%% / Induction

Adam Simmons: The Kites of Tianjin ★★★★★ Raphael Solarsh, Arts Hub “Adam Simmons’ The Usefulness of Art has been a ground-breaking and magnificent musical journey. Simmons and hiscollaborators have plotted a singularly innovative and evocative trail that has taken audience to the far-flung corners of the world with Simmons’ exquisite sonic journals. Each concert has offered not just music inspired by place but deeply personal narratives seamlessly intertwined.” “... Adam Simmons is producing some of the most incredible jazz in Australia or anywhere else.”

Adam Simmons: The Calling ★★★★ Jessica Nicholas, The Age & Sydney Morning Herald “..

Adam Simmons: The Calling ★★★★ Jessica Nicholas, The Age & Sydney Morning Herald “... a deep philosophical – even existential – exploration of Simmons’ own identity and sense of belonging... the most personal of all the works he has produced for his Usefulness of Art series.” “The most impactful – and poignant – passage arose when Simmons and Iyengar performed a semi-improvised duet. Standing behind Simmons, the dancer extended his hands gently around the saxophonist’s hips, allowing him to lean forward at a sharp angle as streams of sonorous beauty emerged from his soprano horn. It was arresting both musically and visually, reflecting the sense of empathy and shared experience that gives this work such a strong emotional resonance.”

Adam Simmons: The Calling —Des Cowley, Australian Books and Arts Review “In an age when the funding of the arts is always an open question, Simmons’s project is a rallying cry for the importance of art in our lives.” “In a world rife with displacement, it (The Calling) questions where we truly belong, and argues for art as an integral means of bringing us together.” “As with previous concerts in the series, Adam Simmons demonstrated jazz’s capacity to continually extend its horizons, drawing sustenance from an array of musical influences: world, classical, experimental. In looking for a parallel – and while acknowledging that the music is of an entirely different order – I was reminded of Duke Ellington’s masterpiece The Far East Suite, composed with Billy Strayhorn and inspired by their travels on tour through Mumbai, Calcutta, Colombo, Lahore, Tehran, Isfahan, and other locales in the early 1960s. Like Ellington, Simmons has chosen to recast his stories and journeys as an extended musical suite. On this occasion, the melding of the Afrolankan Drumming System with the Adam Simmons Creative Music Ensemble was an astounding success. The performance, heightened by strong visual and theatrical elements, again evidenced Simmons’s far-reaching ambition for The Usefulness of Art program.

Adam Simmons and Vikram Iyengar in The Calling —Roger Mitchell, Ausjazz.net “It is impossible, and unnecessary, to compare The Calling with other concerts in The Usefulness of Art series. But this work of art well and truly passed the test of taking us somewhere, of prompting exploration.”

Travelling Tales (fortyfivedownstairs) —★★★★ Des Cowley, Australian Books and Arts Review With three projects in the series now completed, Adam Simmons’s ‘The Usefulness of Art’ can increasingly be viewed as a major musical statement by a mid-career artist. The radical decision by a musician most often associated with jazz to conceptualise these large-scale performances – each in collaboration with a different ensemble – as artworks rather than club gigs is testament to the broad-ranging ambitiousness of Simmons as a composer. For Travelling Tales, the Arcko Symphonic Ensemble provided admirable support, performing their task with extraordinary precision, an impressive feat given that it followed just two rehearsals.

Robert Spencer, Cadence ”Simmons is a monster.”

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