Another year, another success. The reviews of this year’s Wangaratta Festival of Jazz suggest the event is still Australia’s premier jazz celebration.
The Australian – by John McBeath
Wangaratta Town Hall has been the major venue for countless top jazz performers throughout the 18 years of Australia’s foremost jazz festival, but 2007 was its swan song. A swish new performing arts centre will replace it and construction will start in January.
Anticipation was palpable as people queued outside the town hall for Friday’s opening concert to hear the headliner group, bassist Dave Holland’s New York quintet. Broadcast live on ABC Radio National, the band soon had fans applauding its five extraordinarily talented players.
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The Age – Jessica Nicholas
One of the delights of the Wangaratta Jazz Festival is that it always provides as many surprises as expected pleasures.
In the latter category this year was the Dave Holland Quintet, which performed two marvellous concerts on Friday night. And in the former sat Nils Wogram’s Root 70, a band very few patrons at Wangaratta would have been familiar with, but one that made a strong impression with its idiosyncratic and gently playful approach.
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The Sydney Morning Herald – John Shand
THE rain during the 18th Wangaratta jazz festival was not just good weather for ducks. It was drops of gold for drought-stricken north-eastern Victoria, so festival-goers could hardly begrudge it as they trudged and queued to hear more than 50 acts.
Highlights included the Dave Holland Quintet: periodically mesmeric at the Opera House last week, the experience jumped to another level thanks to the acoustics here. This was complex music played with abandon, Holland beaming like a proud father.
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SIMA – John Clare
Sitting in the deep and magical Merriwa Park, hearing bell tones of birds and snipping, sniping sounds that could be birds or insects, I wait happily to hear Dave Holland, and of course I think of Conference Of The Birds and other wonders. Ah, Wangaratta, expansion of the spirit! Blue gums, dappled and streaked with bark, tower above me and two boys play tennis into the gathering dusk on the courts through there. Pock. Pock. Pock. Pock. Music sounds better here, but that is often because it is great.
Yet even with a band of unquestionable high excellence, such as Holland’s, opinion will still be divided on aesthetic grounds. Some, including the great majority of citizens, were overwhelmed. The response to both Holland sets was amongst the most resounding I have heard in the Town Hall. People who could hardly have known about him hailed Holland as they would have a triumphant general returning to Rome. It was musicians who were divided. Some were in awe. Some were in awe but said it was technical music.
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Canberra Jazz – Eric Pozza
Guitars were a big theme at this year’s Wangaratta Jazz Festival. Firstly, and most obviously, because it was this year’s instrument for the National Jazz Awards. Secondly, because of the visit of the renowned New York guitarist, Kurt Rosenwinkel. Thirdly, due to the presence of those Australian masters of the instrument, James Muller and Steve Magnussen.
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Photo: James Muller by Eric Pozza.
