By John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald This one instantly passes the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck test – that slightly creepy chill, not unlike the first waft of cool night air following a hot day in the desert. After a Jewish upbringing, Chicago-based pianist/composer Ryan Cohan only reconnected with his estranged Arab father and the paternal side of … Read More
By John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald When John Coltrane visited Nagasaki on a Japanese tour in 1966, 21 years after the atomic obliteration, he was not with his band members when they left the train. The panicked promoter found him still on board, absorbed in playing his flute. Asked what he was doing, Coltrane … Read More
By John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald A LIFE BETWEEN (Soundsabound) ★★★★ Perhaps it was inevitable that Chase Baird would be a jazz saxophonist, with his first name referencing a Coltrane tune (among others) and his second containing “bird”. But making this second album was not easy, with a little serendipity required before his pieces could … Read More
By: John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald Aaron Whitby – COUSIN FROM ANOTHER PLANET (Ropeadope) ★★★½ Music, like storytelling, is partly the art of balancing the predictable and the unpredictable. You lead someone down the garden path, only to find a chasm, a mountain, a pot of gold, an axe murderer or a lover. No one who … Read More
By: John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald You have to be equally committed and imaginative to even think about doing it. The harp first appeared in jazz in 1934, and a complete collection of all jazz harp records will hardly clutter your shelves or hard-drive 85 years later, it being a challenge to make the instrument … Read More
by John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald ★★★★ She’s spent her career enhancing the music of Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, Cher, Chaka Khan, Pink and others. But, as with Lisa Fischer, when Vivian Sessoms leads her own project, her towering voice and sensitive musicality shunts many bigger names into the shade. Nor is she … Read More
John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald ★★★★½ The impetus was Sly and the Family Stone’s In Time from the 1973 album Fresh, crowned by Andy Newmark’s drumming. Miles Davis walked into the rehearsal room, played it to his band over and over, and told them that this was how he now wanted the music to sound. So the transition from … Read More
John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald Andy Milne & Dapp Theory THE SEASONS OF BEING (Sunnyside) ★★★★☆ Ah, the old chestnut of music and healing. Even born sceptics like me subscribe to it, having experienced the effect too many times for doubt. Pianist/composer Andy Milne understands the link, too. He might take his theorising into new-age … Read More
John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald If ever an opening line was going to transfix you, “I followed whiskey into the country of Legionella” should do it. The Kerouac-influenced poem Open Water is graffitied through this album in three instalments, written and delivered by John Goode, whose voice is a scythe slicing straight into your central nervous system, … Read More
John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald Jeff “Siege” Siegel Quartet LONDON LIVE (ARC) ★★★★☆ No, I hadn’t heard of Jeff Siegel either, but the American drummer leads a storming band. This live album was recorded on the last date of a European tour, so the quartet was well primed. Alas the gig was in London on … Read More
