Adam Simmons

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.”

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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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