The Neilson, November 22
8/10
Twenty-four years ago pianist Andrea Keller won the inaugural Freedman Jazz Fellowship, and now she was one of a trio of judges announcing that saxophonist/composer Sam Gill had won this year’s $30,000 fellowship. Gill will pursue compositional studies, collaboration and recording in New York across the next two years.
While the windfall can be life-changing, the evening again felt more of a concert than a competition, with the four finalists performing in one of Sydney’s best venues, with musicians of their choice. It was a testament to the diversity and creativity of Australian jazz that all four sounded like no one else in the music’s history.
Gill performed three of his compositions with an iteration of his band Coursed Waters, featuring pianist Novak Manojlovic, electric bassist Christopher Hale and drummer James McLean. Instantly we were assailed by the piquancy of Gill’s soprano saxophone sound and the intriguing outside-of-the-box nature of his sophisticated compositions, with their rhythmic switchbacks and radically changing vistas. On Double Down, he turned to his more usual alto saxophone for a piece that could have been the love child of a menage a trois between Anthony Braxton, Frank Zappa and Nino Rota. It allowed the players maximum creative scope, including a Manojlovic solo that swelled and ebbed with the rhythm section to create an extraordinary sense of the music arriving in waves rather than metered time. After a glorious solo from Hale’s six-string bass, the band converged on a sudden starburst of energy that one felt as a physical jolt.
But then trumpeter Niran Dasika would have been a worthy winner, too, initially elevating us to the heavens with celestial solo trumpet – although any angels involved were of the fallen variety, with digital looping, circular breathing and vocal growls used to supernatural effect. When joined by guitarist Lawrence Folvig and drummer Kyrie Anderson, the impact was nothing short of visionary. The guitar hummed and sang like some natural phenomenon, while Anderson was endlessly inventive both texturally and rhythmically, and the trumpet cried out its songs of quiet desperation. In its conceptual scope, this was not a trio, but a three-piece orchestra.
Pianist Wilbur Whitta’s trio with bassist Cameron Undy and Alexander Inman-Hislop was utterly engrossing in its sheer playfulness and its ability to make jazz minus the cliches. Again, the compositions were notable for their originality and internal contrasts, with Whitta’s playing effortlessly blending blitheness and conviction.
If Perth singer Holli Scott didn’t quite rise to the heights of the other three, she was engaging on her own terms, proving an imaginative lyricist, composer and singer, whose music drifted and swooned like a morning-after reverie. Her songs were performed with trumpeter Jessica Carlton and guitarist Dom Barrett, who ensured that dreaminess remained the prevailing aesthetic, even if the trio was reportedly compromised by sound issues.