John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

January 2, 2019 / Album Reviews - Archive

CINDER: EMBER: ASHES (Sofa) 8/10 An explorer and a musician, an improviser and a composer, Aviva Endean takes her assorted clarinets (and occasional other instruments) into uncharted musical lands on this solo album; lands where – as if she has stepped through an aural looking-glass – they suddenly cease to…

December 31, 2018 / Features - Archive

Some concerts soothe, some shake you up, and then there are Peter Brotzmann’s concerts. Here the issue is survival. His monstrous tenor saxophone sound may well register on the Richter scale, yet it’s also profoundly human: exhilarating, heart-rending, terrifying and, yes, beautiful. With typical perverseness he chose to place his…

December 29, 2018 / Album Reviews - Archive

THROUGH HER EYES (www.danbarentt.com.au) 7.5/10 Given that it is memorial to his mother, a remarkable optimism pervades this opus from singer/trombonist Dan Barnett. Or perhaps it is stoicism alchemised into optimism in the very act of making the music. It was recorded live in a private home, which can sometimes…