Young jazz players strut their stuff at Sydney’s big festival

A majestic set by US guitarist Bill Frisell was the jewel in the crown of this year’s Sydney Con International Jazz Festival.

Bill Frisell performing at the Sydney Con International Jazz Festival in June 2019. Picture: Anthony Browell

• Paul Kelly on wings of song
• Stella by starlight
• All lit up with Dirty Three
• Classical Marsalis masterclass

His 90 minute sold-out concert at the Sydney Conservatorium on Sunday ranged over a pastiche of styles, tunes and sonic landscapes using effects, loops and delays while Thomas Morgan’s contrabass and Rudy Royston’s drums and cymbals followed as if by telepathy Frisell’s magpie musical mind.

A beautifully delivered chordal jazz passage segued into a country blues riff, and a haze of layered loops and harmonics suddenly shifted into pure Americana.

Snatches of familiar and half-familiar tunes wafted through to be embellished by Royston’s light-handed flicking dance on the skins and Morgan’s beautiful bass lines.

Thelonius Monk’s Epistrophy gave way to John Barry’s You Only Live Twice; Burt Bacharach’s What The World Needs Now was followed by a short encore, We Shall Overcome.

But the marquee acts of Frisell and quadruple Grammy Award winner Billy Childs and his quartet were only a glamorous part of a fine day of top-notch jazz from mainly Australian musicians, including some of tomorrow’s stars in the Sydney Con Jazz Orchestra – one of the highlights in an amazingly tight and vibrant set of works by Melbourne composer Vanessa Perica who directed them – and the Australian National Jazz Orchestra.

Among the workshops was an enchanting hour with pianist Kevin Hunt with four Aboriginal friends including 80-year-old singer-guitarist Johnny Nicol, and a rambling hour with Don Was, bassist, record producer and president of Blue Note Records, who reminisced and gave a little advice to a couple of young bands.

With so much on offer throughout the day in five venues it was hard to decide what to see. Standouts that this reviewer caught were the Hannah James Trio, with James on contrabass, Steve Barry with a Bill Evans-like touch on piano and the nicely understated drumming of Jamie Cameron, and the Jamie Oehlers Quintet, with some superb duetting between Oehlers’ tenor saxophone and Ricki Malet’s trumpet a feature.

The energy in the Verbrugghen Hall was palpable when the Sydney Con Jazz Orchestra performed their hour-long set with Perica. The 18-piece ensemble only had an intensive month of eight-hour days to learn and polish these original pieces. The results were stunning and two names to watch out for are saxophonist Zac Olsen and the extraordinarily talented guitarist Josh Meader.

They are their colleagues at the Con offer great hope for the future of jazz in this country.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: Jazz Festival at the Con

● WHERE: Conservatorium of Music

● WHEN: Sunday, June 2