So, what's happening in Adelaide. Some notes from James Brown, who has recently set up the Adelaide Jazz Collective.
JB: I've been trying to get something like this off the ground for about 12 months, but we only had our first official "meeting" a few weeks ago. We decided to run it as a collective of bands rather than individuals – so far we have 9 ensembles. Our notion of jazz is liberal, but the focus is on original and contemporary music rather than reiterations of the past.
The main goal was to create a grass-roots, musician led collective to build on the mutual support already present in the jazz community in Adelaide, also giving the musicians a sense of ownership and control over their performance environment. In this way it fulfils a different role to important organisations like Jazz SA and COMA (Creative Original Music Adelaide) (of which I am a founding member and currently serving as Artistic Director together with Sam Cagney, who was also integral in getting the AJC off the ground). These organisations are more traditional arts organisations (though COMA is also musician run), in that they rely to a large extent on government funding, and local ensembles perform at most once or twice per year. The AJC is more of a cooperative – the small amount of revenue it needs to operate is provided through memberships, and bands are paid for their performances from the takings on the door at each gig. The idea is to create a sustainable and mutually beneficial model that can withstand the organisational and economic challenges of the live music scene, where bands can perform their material on a more regular basis.
For the rest of the year gigs are on the 2nd Thursday of the month at Bill's Gallery & Bar at The Goodwood Institute and will each feature three ensembles. This is a great venue space – location, size and the sound of the room are perfect for the kinds of ensembles in the collective. They've been very supportive of the AJC and are providing the venue free of charge. They do not take a cut of the door either, which is nice!"
So if you would like to know more about the collective why not go and say hi to James at bill's Gallery & Bar.
BW image is the band "Watt?"
(Logan Watt – keys, Matthew Crago – Drums, Daniel Norris – Bass)
