Where We Are Now
7/10
Following in the giant footsteps of Ten Part Invention comes Mosaic, a new Sydney band with the same 10-piece instrumentation, and with the same shared emphases on improvisation and original compositions (from both inside and outside the band). Formed at the Sydney Conservatorium by trombonist Lee Orszaczky and saxophonist Chiara Minotto, the band bristles with talent and ideas on this, its debut album.
It begins almost shyly, with saxophonist Lachie Eggert’s gospel-tinged The Ambient Sound Suite, which could almost be an outtake from Carla Bley’s fabulous Dinner Music set from 1977. Sarah Purdon’s Showers in May offers a more expansive canvas, with interesting cross currents in the arrangement, before Orszaczky smears his massive trombone sound across it all, after which come delightfully contrasting forays from Minotto’s flute and James Watt’s bass. The total package manages to be to seem simultaneously autumnal and bustling, as if programmatically depicting people trying to escape those showers.
Sustaining the meteorological bent is Minotto’s pretty Come Rain or Shine, with lyrics and vocal by Leah Berry, about a relationship break-up that was apparently for the best, with apposite solos from trumpeter Braden Clarke and Eggert on tenor. More intriguing is The Princesses Picnic by guest saxophonist Gabriella Hill, with its initially ghostly interaction between her tenor, Ravi Trachtenberg-Ray’s piano and Matt Simmonds’ drums, before the whole band rears up behind Hills’ now-storming tenor, which then beckons a short feature from Simmonds.
Orszaczky’s The Bard is a soul-jazz stomp, the groove decorated with silvery lines from firstly Trachtenberg-Ray and then the soprano of Leo Marland. Another guest composer, Thnvir Gill, is responsible for the more turbulent – portentous, even! – 600 Omens, which boasts some dramatic ensemble work and again has vague echoes of Bley.
The medley of Eggert’s swinging Chicken Burger and Minotto’s Not Enough Blues pulls the band close to some of the pieces that Bob Bertles wrote for Ten Part Invention: the arrangements sizzling and Aidan Wong delivering one of the album’s most compelling solos on tenor.
They end on a more elegiac note with Wong’s Alone, on which he again shows himself to be a notably visceral improviser, and the piece, itself is gorgeous in the way it mutates, with trumpeter Sarah Morison exploring the implications of the fairground-like ¾ section at the end.
Pieces like this point the way forward for the band: casting its compositional net as wide as possible, and meanwhile letting the ensemble’s character emerge not just via the pieces, but via each member becoming ever more distinctive in terms of sound and ideas. You can hear them launch it at Lazy Bones in Marrickville on October 24 and at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival on November 2.