Jazz Australia News

Sandy Evans was awarded an OAM at the Queens Birthday honours list for her service to Australian contemporary jazz music as a composer and musician. Sandy's outstanding achievements included; •Joined, Australian Art Orchestra, 1992.
•Co-musical Director, Ten Part Invention, since 1986; Group... Read more..

The winners announced for the most prestigious awards in Australian Jazz. The Australian Jazz Bell Awards, dubbed ‘The Bells’ in honor of the Australian jazz pioneer Graeme Bell AO MBE, have established themselves in just eight years as a high point on the Jazz calendar. The Jury panel, which includes... Read more..

On 1st March 2010 history was made at Jazzworx! in Brisbane, when 30 new students officially began studying for their Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance. It’s the first time the Bachelor has been offered anywhere in the county and when these students graduate they will be the very first to hold... Read more..

Katie Noonan has won the gong for best jazz album at the ARIA Artisan and Fine Arts Awards for Blackbird, The Music Of Lennon and McCartney See the list of nominees And Lingua Franca, a band led by James Greening and Andrew Robson, won the the 2009 Australian Independent Records (AIR) award for Best... Read more..

A new performing arts centre was in place for the twentieth Wangaratta Festival of Jazz. Read reviews and blog posts from the anniversary event to find out what went on inside the venue. John McBeath - The Australian
Unlike previous Wangaratta festivals, the twentieth anniversary edition had no... Read more..

Brisbane saxophonist Zac Hurren has won the 2009 National Jazz Award at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz.Phil Noy was awarded second prize and Jacam Manricks third.Zac received $6000 prize money plus a studio recording session for Jazztrack with Mal Stanley on ABC Classic FM and an invitation to perform... Read more..

Each year, Jazz Australia talks to the ten finalists in Australia's most prestigious jazz competition, the National Jazz Awards. The award in 2009 is for saxophone. The award finals are held at Wangaratta Jazz, which this year runs from Friday 30 October to Monday 2 November. The National Jazz Awards... Read more..

In Australia he was a rising jazz star, but that didn't count for much in the US, where no one knew his name. So it took a certain amount of courage for Barney McAll to wander into New York's Sweet Basil jazz club and offer his services to the owner, Horst Liepolt. It was the mid-1990s, and Liepolt was... Read more..

This year saxophone is the featured instrument at the National Jazz Awards and organisers say they received a record number of entries. The ten finalists are: • James Annesley, 29 (Melbourne)
• Nick Bowd, 30 (Sydney)
• Jon Crompton, 23 (Melbourne)
• Zac Hurren, 31 (Brisbane)Read more..

The National Jazz Alliance was created in 2008 to develop a unified voice and strategy for jazz and improvised music (JAIM) in Australia. It is working towards a coordinated approach to developing the sector. VISION Our aim is to better develop a vibrant, creatively high quality and financially viable... Read more..

If you were at the Daorum concert at the Sydney Opera House in March 2008, you had a taste of the journey of musical exploration and discovery that drummer Simon Barker has been on for the last few years. Intangible Asset Number 82, the directorial debut of Emma Franz, takes us on this journey and has... Read more..

Despite the emergence of many distinctive voices in Australian jazz music over the past ten to fifteen years, New York City still looms in the imagination of many young jazz musicians as a serious testing ground for their developing talents. Australians are not alone in their ambition to study and play... Read more..

Sydney-based vocalist Kristin Berardi will perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland next month.Ms Beradi reached the semi-final stage of the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition and will now sing on 3 and 4 July in front of a jury led by Al Jarreau.Kristin took third place at the 2005 National... Read more..

As the Sydney Improvised Music Association begins its 2006 program, president and artistic director Peter Rechniewski spoke to Peter Jordan about SIMA’s achievements, plans for the future and the challenges faced by jazz in the new millennium.Peter Jordan: Has SIMA realised its original aims?
Peter... Read more..

On 1st March 2010 history was made at Jazzworx! in Brisbane, when 30 new students officially began studying for their Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance. It’s the first time the Bachelor has been offered anywhere in the county and when these students graduate they will be the very first to hold... Read more..

Brisbane saxophonist Zac Hurren has won the 2009 National Jazz Award at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz.Phil Noy was awarded second prize and Jacam Manricks third.Zac received $6000 prize money plus a studio recording session for Jazztrack with Mal Stanley on ABC Classic FM and an invitation to perform... Read more..

In the latest in our series on the people behind the country’s major jazz organisations, South Australian Jazz Coordinator Margaret Reines discusses the state of the music in Adelaide.Margaret is an ideal position to provide an overview - she has been in the job for 17 years.Jazz Australia: How has... Read more..

The weekend of 22 and 23 of October, the Coopers East End Jazz Festival takes place at Rundle Park in Adelaide's East End. The Glenelg Jazz Festival in Adelaide may have disappeared from the scene, but jazz enthusiasts in South Australia will still have access to some great jazz through this new festival.The... Read more..

New York trumpeter Charles Tolliver will headline the 20th Wangaratta Jazz Festival, performing with the Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra and leading a quartet with pianist Mike Nock.Tolliver rose to prominence in the early 1960s and has played and recorded with many of jazz’s leading figures, including... Read more..

We are approaching the 20th anniversary of the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues. I have reviewed every year but one, writing at first for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, then in more recent times for the SIMA website. To mark this extraordinary anniversary, SIMA have assembled below all the... Read more..

The 2009 Melbourne International Jazz Festival program has been announced and features an interesting mix of overseas stars and local artists. Interestingly, it also includes major collaborations between the two.The international contingent includes pianist (and poet) Cecil Taylor, on his second visit... Read more..

TWO veritable giants of jazz performed in Australia for the first time in 2008 without including Melbourne in their itinerary. Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman both gave unforgettable concerts, well worth an interstate trip (I saw Rollins in Sydney and Coleman in Adelaide), but it's a pity Melbourne... Read more..

With the imminence of the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival I thought I would take the opportunity to give you a backdrop to the rationale on the selection of our jazz artists.Lindy Hume the Artistic Director for PIAF chose Transcendence and Transformation as the focus for the 2005 festival. That... Read more..

It is a well documented fact that Perth is the world’s most isolated capital city.However, what this fails to describe is that the regional centres in the huge state of Western Australia are both reasonably distant from Perth and not particularly high in population.WA is about one third of the total... Read more..