"Sound Fusion, or just plain confusing?"
Australian Art Orchestra
Iwaki Auditorium
27 October 2002
Two jazz 'orchestras' have played at this Melbourne Festival, each coming from a jazz tradition but exploring the crossover between fully notated music and improvisation.
The Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra, formed in 1964, is a permanent ensemble of about 20 people. On this Melbourne tour they were led by trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg and played just one work, Mikkelborg's The Voice of Silence.
This hour-long suite is a set of responses to works in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, near Copenhagen. It creates a fantastic variety of sound textures, from a crashing rock groove to traditional swinging big band.
Various players contribute improvised solos, some wonderful, like Mikkelborg's smoky sotto voce, others less so, such as the second trumpet who stumbles more than soared. The real highlight was the organic drive of a band which can play with discipline and imagination.
The Australian Art Orchestra has a similar composition to the Danish visitors, with horns, reeds, rhythm section, keyboards and violin in an ensemble of 19. There's a slightly more academic focus to this band,, however, with its manifesto of 'renewing' the two formats of big band and symphony orchestra.
The AAO's program Shorelines featured the world premiere of Orbit, a short work by renowned American film composer Howard Shore. Especially commissioned by the AAO, Orbit offers each musician the opportunity and responsibility for improvisation, and Shore builds each instrument into a growing mass. An attractive melody line holds the various pieces together.
Two other works on the program were both written by the AAO's director, Paul Grabowsky. Concerto was composed in 1994 for pianist Michael Kieran Harvey, soloist on this occasion. There's a lot of parody here, including frequent gestures to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5. Harvey was typically ebullient, although the sound balance kept him strangely distant.
The band finished with Grabowsky's Five Questions, a work that exemplifies the aims of the ensemble. Particularly memorable was an impro sequence where the violinist and guitarist rubbed the fingerboards of their instruments up and down the neck of the double bass ∆ Pierre Boulez meets Spinal Tap. Five Questions might also be a motto for the AAO. What is its purpose, repertoire and future? Where will its funding and audience come from? Not all these questions have easy answers.
- The Australian (Kevin Ball), 29 October 2001
