Australian HiFi — May-June 2017

JAZZ TRACK
By John Shand

66 Australian Hi-Fi http://www.avhub.com.au

Among the indigenous idioms with which jazz

has intermingled, South Africa’s music has

been an especially natural fit. Such Rainbow

Nation musicians as Abdullah Ibrahim, Dudu

Pukwana and Louis Moholo have been

responsible for some of the most distinctive,

ebullient jazz ever made. Norwegian pianist

Andreas Loven recorded this album there, and

while the typical Scandinavian compositional

Blues For Serahas such a relaxed, loping swing

that you can’t help but exhale deeply in a

contented sort of way, and think things aren’t

too bad. A bass line played on organ pedals

always fashions a different groove, and here the

tap-dancing is done by Darren Heinrich, his feet

and Toby Hall’s drumming making the music

super-relaxed and yet insistently toe-tappin’.

Joining the party are Jeremy Sawkins (guitar),

Phronesis views jazz from a different angle. Part

of the Anglo-Danish band’s secret has been

solving the problem of sonic transparency when

piano (Ivo Neame), bass (Jasper Hoiby) and

drums (Anton Eger) are played together, whether

improvising or enunciating superbly-crafted

compositions. In most such trios the cymbals

wash out the piano’s overtones while the piano

swamps the bass. There’s no crime in having

musical foregrounds and backgrounds, but the

members of Phronesis have found how to bring all

three instruments into equal focus for a remarkable

proportion of the time, so that the music magic

lies in the micro-interaction. Parallax is the finest

iteration of this ideal so far. Aided by exquisite

recording the bass can loom monumentally from

the piano’s dancing agitation and the intricate,

dramatic puzzle being enacted by the drums.

voices in these six unedited improvisations they

tend to concentrate on creating dark and even

sinister contexts in which the clarinet can suddenly

flare like an open-flame torch, or in which its

eeriness is compounded. Collectively shunning

the constraints of idiom, including the clichés of

free improvisation, the trio alternates between

sparseness and intricacy, and between abstraction

and a profound humanism.

Alister Spence’s samples and music box. Not that

what happens the rest of the time dumps us

into a dull adult world: over the last two decades

Spence (piano), Hall (drums) and Lloyd Swanton

(bass) have edged away from being a straight jazz

piano trio, arriving at an improvising language

more about moods and casting spells than chord

progressions and virtuosic role-playing. But they

can also groove like hell.

This music is often delicate to the point

of fragility, as befits what is loosely a

programmatic depiction of the lifecycle of

the caterpillar/butterfly. This is the second

album from the Sydney-based Indonesian

jazz pianist Francesca Prihasti, and again

she recorded it in New York, this time with

Australian guitarist Nic Vardanega and the

Big Apple’s Orlando Le Flemming (bass) and

Rodney Green (drums). Prihasti’s own silken

improvisations contrast with Vardanega’s more

hard-lined forays, and both are underpinned by

a rhythm section so fluid as to fit the shape of

any musical vessel in which it might find itself.

The uniformly pretty music begs, however, for at

least one piece of higher drama to raise the stakes

for a moment, as would befit the programmatic

concept, too.

traits of spaciousness and wistful beauty are present,

he has also clearly bought into the local culture,

with the rhythms and melodies of Inside District Six

and African Piano immediately evoking the sound

of the Townships. Tenor saxophonist Buddy Wells

is a sparse player who likes to work with short,

stabbing phrases, and the rhythm section of bassist

Romy Brauteseth and drummer Clement Benny is

marvellously supple.

Spike Mason (saxophones) and Heinrich (on the

organ’s upstairs section). Even on the faster Shiftin’

or the funkier Funny Farm the playing has a

breeziness: more like flying than digging in.

On the Irish traditional She Moved Through the Fair

the guitar and saxophone combine to bagpipe-

like effect, taking the listener to a very different,

floating, misty world.

http://www.johnshand.com.au

Wayfinders| Left Hand Path | Downstream

Alister Spence Trio| Live | Alister Spence Music ASM004

Andreas Loven | District Six | Losen/Birdland LOS 152-2

Francesca Prihasti | Evolving | francescaprihasti.com.au

Jeremy Sawkins Organ Quartet | Artefact | jeremysawkins.com

Phronesis | Parallax | Edition/Planet EDN 1070

When the clarinet faded from favour as a front-

line jazz instrument the music lost a singularly

expressive array of colours. As Jon Hunt shows

here, the clarinet is capable of mimicking the

human voice just as well as a saxophone, but

often in a more disquieting way, and if you

want to emphasise eerie, ghostly qualities it

is perfect. Although Mark Shepard (double

bass) and Ronny Ferella (drums) are equal

Whenever this band’s drama, invention,

energy and repetition-based voodoo suddenly

drops away to Toby Hall’s glockenspiel I am

transported back to a world where teddy-

bears and tip-trucks were as big as I was,

and reality was a dull place peopled by

adults. This little instrument turns the music

into a toy-land of marvels and phantoms:

make-believe music, sometimes enhanced by