Musicians certainly get around. When I dial Tom O’Halloran’s mobile number, I expect to be speaking to him in his Marrickville home but the reception sounds too dodgy.
“Where are you, Tom?” I ask. The telephone mumbles at me and I take a stab at what I think I’ve heard. “You’re in Noosa?” I ask. “No, but I’ll be there shortly, too,” he says. “I’m in Memphis.”
That’s Memphis, Tennessee. O’Halloran is on tour with Void, one of the Perth bands of which he remains a member despite having moved to Sydney.
This is the second time the jazz pianist has been to the US this year and the trips back to Western Australia are constant, with demand for O’Halloran in his home town surging since he studied composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Sydney has a reputation as a city where there is no work for musicians but O’Halloran gets by, and not just from gallivanting around the planet. Breaking into the local jazz scene, however, was not easy.
“I didn’t know a hell of a lot of people because most people who move from Perth tend to go to Melbourne,” he says.
Nonetheless, word of his phenomenal skills soon spread. O’Halloran believes Sydney is the hotbed of creative music in Australia.
If there’s an Australian voice that’s coming out of jazz, I reckon it’s through Sydney,” he says.
It’s a theory that can be tested at the fourth Jazz: Now festival at the Opera House, which includes the debut of the new Sydney version of the Tom O’Halloran Trio (with bassist Cameron Undy and drummer Evan Mannell) on the final night.
Read the full story on The Sydney Morning Herald website.
