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Julien Wilson
Julien Wilson is a Melbourne saxophonist and composer who has been a crucial member of the Australian jazz community since the mid 90’s. He studied at VCA under Brian Brown & Barry Duggan and at Boston’s New England Conservatory with George Russell & Paul Bley. Throughout the 90's he was an integral member of a number of highly regarded co-operative bands including Ishish, Festa, and the Swiss-based multi-national band, Snag. He has released a dozen albums as leader or co-leader, and his trio has been hailed as one of Australia’s most unique groups.
He has recorded and performed with artists including Charlie Haden, Hermeto Pascoal, Nigel Kennedy, Hugh Masekala, Jim Black, Kurt Elling & the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, made long standing contributions to the Black Arm Band and the Australian Art Orchestra, and been a regular member of groups run by leading Australian musicians including Stu Hunter, Jonathan Zwartz, Paul Grabowsky, Jex Saarelaht, Aaron Choulai & Mike Nock.
After spending extended periods in Europe in the late 90's, then living in Boston and New York for a few years, Julien returned to Melbourne in 2001 and had a very fruitful musical period. He formed the assumptions trio with Will Guthrie and Stephen Magnusson and they released two critically acclaimed albums in 2003 & 2004. When Guthrie left Australia in 2004 the Julien Wilson Trio was formed with Magnusson and Steve Grant.
He released his debut album, while you were sleeping in 2006 and followed it up with Trio_Live in 2007. His trio undertook a three week European tour in 2006 that included two sold out shows at the Berlin Jazz Festival, and he then recorded Kaleidoscopic with Magnusson in New York at the start of 2007. He directed the Australian Art Orchestra's Crossing Roper Bar project from 2005-2007. He was featured on a number of well received Australian jazz recordings, performed at most of Australia's major jazz festivals, and toured regularly overseas with his trio and other groups. He got married in 2005 and had two daughters in 2007 & 2010.
In 2013 Wilson formed his own record label, lionsharecords. The inaugural release on the label, This is Always is Wilson's first recording with a classic jazz quartet. The 2nd release, Swailing, is a studio album by his long standing trio and is due out in early 2014. 2013 also marked the first time Julien recorded on clarinet and bass clarinet on the album Sweethearts, a trio with Sam Anning (NY) & Allan Browne.
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Sam Anning: Earthen
by Alberto Bazzurro
Una musica largamente composta, molto intenzionale, come amiamo dire in questi casi, forse qua e là persino troppo “abbottonata," nel senso di priva delle necessarie (o quanto meno opportune, auspicabili) aperture, improvvisative ma forse prima ancora emotive, e in ogni caso di sicuro valore e interesse, è quanto ci arriva da questo nuovo lavoro del contrabbassista australiano Sam Anning, già firmatario di una dozzina di album a suo nome. Vi aleggia un descrittivismo molto educato, levigato, senza ...
Continue ReadingSam Anning: Earthen
by Jerome Wilson
Sam Anning spent three years as bassist for Archie Roach, an Indigenous Australian singer-songwriter who championed the rights of that country's Aboriginal people. Roach passed away in 2022 and this album is Anning's tribute to him, a set of original works that carry forth the inner strength and understated force of Roach's music. Anning's compositions are unhurried and contemplative. They resemble classic ECM sounds but with a warmer, more intimate vibe. Throughout the album Andrea Keller's piano leads ...
Continue ReadingVanessa Perica: The Eye is the First Circle
by Angelo Leonardi
Il secondo album della compositrice e bandleader australiana Vanessa Perica, conferma le aspettative suscitate dall'impressionante debutto del 2020 Love Is a Temporary Madness che le ha portato numerosi riconoscimenti in patria e all'estero, con recensioni superlative della massime riviste specializzate. Entro le coordinate espressive del modern mainstream orchestrale, Vanessa mostra una scrittura avvincente, che alterna momenti ritmicamente trascinanti a sequenze d'ampio respiro, timbricamente ricercate. Entro smaglianti orchestrazioni ricche di trascinanti riff, lunghi pedali e scontri di sezioni, i ...
Continue ReadingVanessa 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 ...
Continue ReadingVanessa 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 ...
Continue ReadingBarry 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. ...
Continue ReadingVanessa 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 ...
Continue Reading“one of the most exciting musicians in the country … vital to Australian creative music” SydneyMorningHerald
"I can hear influences as diverse as Archie Shepp, Jan Garbarek, Ben Webster, Gato Barbieri, Dave Liebman... But particularly, of Mark Simmonds, who is one of the heroes of jazz saxophone in this country" Dale Barlow
"Wilson was always the real thing, exploiting the instrument’s warmth and sonic breadth to make gripping statements. The Melbourne saxophonist arrived on a shock wave in the early ‘90s and has been vital to Australian creative music since." John Shand
Photos
Music
Hemispheres
From: HemispheresBy Julien Wilson
Brightside
From: Sleepy TownBy Julien Wilson
I'll See You
From: In My DreamsBy Julien Wilson
Videos
Julien Wilson
Location: Melbourne
Instrument: Saxophone, tenor
Born: May 27, 1972
