"Diverse"
Australian Art Orchestra, Malvern Town Hall, 22 January 2003
It's hard to believe a decade has gone by since the Australian Art Orchestra premiered its first work, Ringing the Bell Backwards. Now it is hard to imagine Australia's cultural landscape without the AAO, an ensemble that has created an impressive body of work drawing connections between classical, popular, jazz and non-Western musics.
Its latest project, Hard Core, finds the orchestra circling back to its roots in contemporary jazz. On Wednesday night the AAO premiered nine new arrangements of compositions by Australian jazz artists, most of them also members of the orchestra.
Not surprisingly, the pieces were as diverse as the musical personalities that make up this ensemble of improvisers. On Scott Tinkler's Rude Awakening, the trumpeter laid clipped melodic statements over a restless sea of free association provided by one member of each section of the orchestra. Alister Spence's It's In Her Soul began with a grainily distorted guitar and built up a series of increasingly complex, contrapuntal layers.
Lachlan Davidson's Witch Doctor threw restraint to the wind, with huge brassy stabs and John Rodgers playing blues guitar (on his violin). Rodgers' own piece, Ridiculous, lived up to its name in exhilarating fashion.
- The Age (Jessica Nicholas)
