Coordinating the tour of four West Australian bands to an Italian jazz festival might not seem like a huge endeavour. But with limited time and resources it can assume D-Day-like proportions.
Hip Mo’ Toast, Void, Speedball and Salamander played at the Villa Celimontana Jazz Festival in Rome in June and July as part of an Australian showcase supported by Austrade.
Villa Celimontana is an annual outdoor summer festival held in a garden in the heart of Rome. The event runs for an extraordinary 90 nights – the longest jazz festival in the world – and this year featured the Oliver Lake Steel Quartet, Joe Zawinul, Marcus Miller, Mike Stern, Marilyn Mazur, Jason Marsalis and Enrico Rava.
JazzWa’s Alan Corbet carried much of the administrative burden but each of the bandleaders also had to pitch in.
“The organization of the trip was one of the biggest group efforts I’ve ever been involved in,” says Hip Mo’ Toast’s Libby Hammer. “As a bandleader, I am used to working with my band, or a manager or producer to create a project, but Villa Celimontana involved 19 musicians in four bands plus one manager. Not to mention that we had to raise enough money to get them all to Italy to play four gigs.”
Alan Corbet says the fact that some of the musicians were overseas or in other parts of the country made the logistics rather difficult.
“It was an intense process with trying to organise a fundraising event, generate potential sponsor contacts, and in many areas we were breaking new ground and making new contacts as we went,” says Alan.
“Seemingly simple things like organising accommodation become complex when booking for 23 people at the height of the summer, and flights to Europe were generally more difficult to organise due the World Cup.
The consensus seems to be that the Australian groups were well received, though the football mania that swept the city at the time meant that there sometimes distractions.
“The reception was fantastic,” says Alan Corbet. “It was really heartening after all the organisational effort to see a near full house each night with the exception of the Italy-Ukraine quarter final night.”
“More than that, the audiences were hugely appreciative. From some of the feedback I received, people were not sure what to expect and genuinely surprised at the quality of the performances. On the final night I had people coming up to me thanking me in person for bringing our music over.”
Libby Hammer is certain it was a positive experience for those who participated. “There is no doubt that this performance was an important one for each and every musician involved in this performance,” she says.
For Speedball’s Carl Mackey the European trip ended with a bang. After the festival he had the opportunity to meet jazz legend Sonny Rollins in Spain. “He has been my idol since childhood,” says Carl.
Will there be a repeat performance? Alan Corbet is enthusiastic about the possibilities of promoting Australian jazz musicians overseas but is concerned about the lack of organizational and administrative support to sustain such tours.
“The possibilities are certainly there but in the absence of a national infrastructure backed by adequate funding, it is difficult to have any organized approach to international development on a national scale so it tends to be left to the artists to carve out their own route,” he says.
“I believe that Australian jazz needs to be outwardly focused, and it would be beneficial to have some structure in place that could work with the Australia Council, Austrade, Tourism Australia and build alliances with other organisations promoting Australia overseas to help our top artists get their music out to a wider international public.”
Read a Q&A with Alan Corbet
Photo: Libby Hammer
