John Shand Posts

September 25, 2013 / Features - Archive

  A note or two was all it took. Turn on the radio, hear that saxophone sound and it was obvious your were hearing Bernie McGann inside one bar. All jazz musicians aspire to reaching that point. Few achieve it. That singularity placed McGann in jazz’s ultimate elite: an instrumental…

September 22, 2013 / Features - Archive

I spoke Ute Lemper, the modern queen – some would say goddess! – of cabaret, on the eve of her 2013 Australian tour… John Shand: How did the Pablo Nerua project come about? Ute Lemper: After having done this Bukowsky project, where I set the Bukowsky poetry to music I…

September 4, 2013 / Album Reviews - Archive

Paul Motian (ECM) It was none other than Keith Jarrett who, around 1970, sold a piano to Paul Motian. Motian, already one of jazz’s key drummers, had a head swimming with melodies, many of them carrying echoes of his Armenian/Turkish heritage. Now he learned notation and began to formalise them.…