Jazz is an oral/aural discipline, and here were two new faces learning in the best school of all: on the job, surrounded by about 12 decades of experience.
Just as a young Dale Barlow once played and learnt with Art Blakey and with Cedar Walton, on this night bassist Carl Dunicliff and drummer Sam Cairns were absorbing and contributing to the music of three seminal forces of Australian jazz: Barlow, alto saxophonist Bernie McGann and pianist Bobby Gebert.
They began with a Hank Mobley blues, Breakthrough, McGann growling like a bear that had been prematurely awoken from hibernation. Barlow’s tenor sprawled confidently across this and Tadd Dameron’s On a Misty Night. Here Gebert deployed his customary delicacy at the keyboard’s upper end, but the rhythm section left insufficient air for pinpoint precision and teardrop sensitivity. Their drive was more apposite behind McGann, as he embellished his lines with angsty squawks and joyous squeaks, culminating in a cry to almost encapsulate the human condition.
Read the full review on The Sydney Morning Herald website
