Biography

Julien Wilson

Saxophones

photo credit: Matthew Stanton

Julien Wilson is a saxophonist & composer from Melbourne who runs his own trio, quartet & quintet. He performs regularly in Melbourne and spent much of the late 90’s living and working in Europe and the USA. Julien has been invited to perform at many of Australia’s major festivals as well as touring in Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Germany, Denmark, the UK & the US. He holds music degrees from Melbourne University (Victorian College of the Arts) and New England Conservatory in Boston, and teaches improvisation and saxophone at the Victorian College of the Arts and Monash University.

He first came to notice at the age of 22 at Australia’s premiere jazz festival, Wangaratta Jazz Festival, taking out the first prize in the National Jazz Awards and performing with David Tolley’s THAT. His debut album with the Hammond organ/guitar band Festa was released to rave reviews in 1996. His experience of playing Tolley’s Spontaneously Performed Interactive Composition, Festa’s form of spine tingling ensemble bravado and learning the power and directness of the blues from many local bands enabled him to develop a rhythmic, harmonic and emotional vocabulary of his own, outside the regular constricts of the jazz tradition.

Julien studied extensively under a New England Conservatory scholarship in the USA with Paul Bley, George Russell, Jerry Bergonzi and George Garzone, and worked there with Bob Moses Quartet and & the Artie Shaw Orchestra.

He has performed in small groups with many of the major figures in Australian jazz, including Mike Nock, Paul Grabowsky, Barney McAll, Scott Tinkler, Paul Williamson’s Hammond Combo and Allan Browne, and appears as a regular member of the Australian Art Orchestra, Ishish, Los Cabrones, Rumberos, Virus, Murphy’s Law and SNAG. Julien has been recognised for the excellence of his work through grants awarded by the Australian and Swiss government arts funding bodies for touring, study and recording.

RECORDINGS

Festa - festa
Festa - wide
Snag - Hey, Guess What?
Snag - heaps
Ishish - Ishish
Ishish - What Should Be
Ishish - Waiting For It
Virus - With Her Dixie Eyes Blazing
Virus - Gypsy Tea Room
Magnusson, Wilson, Guthrie - assumptions2
Magnusson, Wilson, Guthrie - departures by assumptions
AAO - Passion
AAO - Into The Fire
Murphy’s Law - Telling Tales
Nichaud Fitzgibbon - When Lights Are Low
David Tolley’s THAT - That’s Bassic
Moovin’ & Groovin’ Orchestra - Big Bands Are Back
The Big One - Spoon Relief

PRESS

This festival also happened to feature the most ravishingly beautiful music I heard in Melbourne this year. In the tiny Old Council Chambers, a new incarnation of the Julien Wilson Trio (Wilson on tenor saxophone, Steve Magnusson on guitar and Stephen Grant on accordion) came together with such astonishing naturalness that the music seemed to be playing itself, pouring out of the players' instruments like glittering lava and sending arrows of aching lyricism straight to the heart.

Jessica Nicholas The Age 31/12/04

THE JOY OF RECKLESSNESS Side on Cafe, August 19 1999

From a Sydney perspective, Julien Wilson seemed to erupt from nowhere at the 1994 Wangaratta Jazz Festival The young Melburnian, bursting with explosive energy, stormed off with the laurels in the National Jazz Awards amid controversy.

Five years on he is one of the most exciting musicians in the country. Like certain of his tenor-saxophone forebears - Evan Parker, Gato Barbieri - Wilson tends to reach climaxes quickly. But having got there, what sets him apart from many other short-fuse improvisers is the ability to sustain those peaks with undiminished fervour for substantial periods.

Crucial to this is his continual manipulation of timbre, using a magnificent braying wail as a base sound. His finest solo came on McCoy Tyner’s Contempla­tion, when the intensity threatened to flatten the room. On his own Used To Be, with its languid melody draped casually over a taut, insistent 5/4 pulse, the wild interval leaps in his tumultuous improvisation suggested a joy in just being reckless for the sake of it.

Reviewed by John Shand

… one of the standouts of the festival… exploratory and adventurous, exhibiting an almost telepathic interplay between the co-leaders. If I had to reach for comparisons, I might hark back to Keith Jarrett’s Quartet recordings for Impulse of the early seventies (high praise indeed). There is something of the same tension at work here, with Magnusson’s more European-orientated soundscapes constantly under threat by Wilson’s probing tenor forays. This was music of great complexity, played passionately by musicians who have more than delivered on their early promise.

Des Cowley Rhythms Magazine 2003

There are times, as a performer or a listener, when you can get so caught up in the music, the unfolding patters of sound, that nothing else matters. You wish the moment could go on forever, and so it is on this CD, with three Melbourne musicians reveling in the joys of improvisation. It would have been exciting to be part of the audience at Melbourne’s Cape lounge for this, since performances such as these are too often tragically lost. Four and a half stars!!

Ashleigh Wilson Herald Sun 2004

The three players make suggestions, share ideas, and then gradually make their way forward, usually settling into an intense, jubilant groove. They are all very resourceful improvisers, and succeed in inspiring each other to play at their best.

Adrian Jackson Rhythms Magazine Feb 04

Wilson’s performance was the epitome of understatement. In this drumer-less setting, the saxophonist’s usual feistiness melted into an enchanting lyricism, while his colleagues helped cast a spell of intimacy that the mesmerised audience was reluctant to break. One of the highlights of this years Half Bent Festival!

Jessica Nicholas The Age 2004

Closing the night was a version of Julien Wilson’s trio, with guitarist Steve Magnusson and piano accordianist Stephen Grant. In this configuration you could relish the exceptional warmth of Wilson’s tenor saxophone, amid lilting music in which beauty of line and subtleties of textural shading were pre-eminent; subdued music that never lost its passion or intensity.

John Shand Sydney Morning Herald, Review of Jazz:Now @ Sydney Opera House 2004

Others

The Band

• Stephen Magnusson
• Carl Dewhurst
• Alex Pertout
• Adrian Sherriff
• Lachlan Davidson
• Julien Wilson
• James Greening
• John O'Donnell
• John Rodgers
• Niko Schauble
• Paul Cutlan
• Paul Grabowsky
• Elliott Dalgleish
• Philip Rex
• Phillip Slater
• Sandy Evans
• Scott Tinkler
• Vanessa Tomlinson
• Simon Barker
• Alister Spence
• Tony Hicks
• Eugene Ball
• Erkki Veltheim
• Benjamin Wilfred
• Roy Wilfred
• David Wilfred
• Johnston Hall