Sydney-based group the Alister Spence Trio has announced it will tour Europe and Canada in June.
Pianist Alister Spence, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer Toby Hall have worked overseas together before, as members of Clarion Fracture Zone, but this is their first international trip as a trio.
They will perform at the Salisbury and Chelsea International Arts Festivals in the UK and play gigs in Scotland and Germany. In Canada, the trio will play at jazz festivals in Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal.
The trio have recorded two albums, with the most recent Flux nominated for an ARIA Award in 2004. The group plan to record their third CD when they return to Sydney in late July.
In addition to leading the trio, Alister is a member of the Australian Art Orchestra and Wanderlust, and has composed music for film. His collaboration with Ivan Sen on the director’s first feature Beneath Clouds was widely acclaimed.
Alister Spence told Jazz Australia the extensive tour took a long time to set up.
Jazz Australia: How did the tour come about? Is this something you organised yourself?
Alister Spence: This is something I have organised myself, with a lot of good advice from a lot of good people. For a short while I hired an administrative assistant for one day a week, but it’s really become a seven-day-a-week ‘on call’ exercise that I have taken over for the last nine months or so. I had wanted to tour the trio for quite a long time but it wasn’t till we put out our second album Flux in 2003 that I felt we had a good strong musical calling card. One of the expressions of positive feedback for the CD came from a friend and radio presenter in Canada who offered to help with festival contacts in Canada if I decided to try and tour there.
From then it was a matter of making a list of festivals and clubs in Europe and Canada that I knew of (or had been to in the past with either CFZ or Wanderlust) or asking friends and contacts overseas. Then putting together a press kit/CD and mailing it out. The whole process has taken almost two years. I was hoping to have enough dates last year to tour and make an application for the Australia Council for travel assistance, but it wasn’t until this year that the tour was solid enough.
JA: How many appearances make up the tour?
AS: We have 11 appearances at this point, starting in the UK on the 9th
June with the Salisbury International Arts festival who are also showing a feature film called Beneath Clouds that I wrote the score for along with the director Ivan Sen. Omar Sosa was a featured musical artist there last year.
Then we play at the Jazz Centre in Edinburgh, a workshop with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra in Glasgow and London for the Chelsea International Arts festival. There have been clubs interested in Berlin and Munich but the World Cup Football is making this a very difficult proposition. After this we fly to Canada for the Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria, Vancouver and Montreal International jazz festivals. We are also giving a concert and workshop in Winnipeg.
JA: Is it hard to make an extensive tour like this work?
AS: The tour does take a lot of work. You’d think I’d be able to type with
five fingers after all this emailing exercise but it still hasn’t happened! And the tour has and will definitely cost me money!
We have been reasonably lucky in that most of our concerts are paying
rates above club rates because they are festivals. But there is a large cost in providing/posting CDs and press kits and various PR costs, car hire, accommodation and per diems and wages for Lloyd and Toby as they are giving up work here to tour. The Australia Council money has covered our airfares which has definitely provided the impetus to go ahead with the tour.
What are the playing situations you’re looking forward to most?
AS: I guess the shows I’m looking forward to the most are the ones where we are indoors in a good theatre/club with a good piano playing two sets
of our music so that we have a chance to settle in and do our thing. In about half of our concerts this will be the case. But also from what my friends have said Montreal is quite an experience just in terms of the sheer size of it and we have a good outdoor venue at a good time there, so we’ll see what happens.
I am also looking forward to playing this many concerts together in a relatively short space of time (we will be away for just under a month), to see how the music develops. That sort of experience for a band is invaluable.
JA: Why does the trio work so well? Is it just about shared experiences over a long period of time or is there more to it?
AS: I think friendship, shared music experiences and musical tastes have a
lot to do with it. Also understanding each others approach to playing helps, so that ideas can develop more spontaneously. From my point of view I have a lot of respect for the skill and musicality of Toby and Lloyd. I think you need this to be open to new possibilities as they are suggested on the bandstand, to build an overall image of the music rather than just the soloists point of view. I feel I am very lucky to make original music with such inventive and often surprising musical souls.
