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
“..
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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
“... 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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