Australian Art Orchestra - A Jazz concert to remember!

The Australian Art Orchestra performed at Alliance Française last night, as a part of their new Indian tour. This is an Australian jazz group based in Melbourne, which consists of 18 members led by director Paul Grabowsky – all highly talented individuals in their own right who take turns to compose. This tour had only four members of the group – Adrian Sherriff on trombone and Japanese flute ( shakuhachi), Alister Spence on piano and keyboards, Peter Foreman (if I heard the name right) on Drums, and Niko Schauble (I think) on guitar.

The started with an Indian Classical influenced piece – ‘Sacred cows tail’. Apparently based on the story in nata shastra about the gradually reducing cows tail. It was sort of reminiscent of Maha Vishnu Orchestra, but with the added dimension of a trombone.

That was followed by a piece composed by Adrian for the Japanese flute shakuhachi, called Pentacle. It was apparently based on the Japanese five note scale. It was haunting and beautiful, and distinctly influenced by Japanese folk music.

There followed a number of avant garde pieces, with the musicians playing their instruments in every way except they way they were meant to be played – plucking the guitar above the bridge and slapping on the strings, directly tapping the pianos wires, playing the drums with the feet on the drums and simultaneously hitting with palm and stick. All very interesting and spectacular, with weird sounds. Not quiet to my taste music wise, but fun to watch. An interesting piece was one called ‘Henry’ composed by the drummer, which was written for his wife’s pet chicken called Henry, who died of shock after being scared by a cat!

I particularly liked a piece by the keyboardist ‘On the hoop’, which was Jamaican influenced, and made the piano sound like a Jamaican steel drum, with the other instruments bolstering the basic rhythm set by the piano.

Thankfully, they ended with two “normal” pieces: Another beautiful piece composed by Adrian for the Japanese flute, which started with a tillana in the Hindustani classical music style, very expertly rendered by Adrian which had the audience roaring their approval.

They ended with a beautiful version of Vande Materam in Raag Desh, which featured some brilliant guitar work which made the guitar sound like a sitar, and a very sweet Vande Materam melody on the trombone.

All in all, an amazing, mind boggling evening of music. If four of these guys can set the stage on fire like this, I think the entire 18 person ensemble playing together would be a fearsome sight!

AAO has a very nice web site http://www.aao.com.au

Actually, I am confused about two of the musicians names, because the names that I noted down during the concert for the drummer and the guitarist dont seem to be mentioned in the website. If anyone can provide corrections, I would be happy to correct this post.