Winner of the Inaugural Bell Award For Australian Jazz Musician of The Year 2003
‘protean, ethereal tenor saxophonist Evans in flights of scintillating, lucid post-Coltrane vernacular.’ Down Beat’s Fred Bouchard, reviewing Sandy Evans’ performance with Dutch percussionist Han Bennink at Wangaratta ’99,
Sandy Evans: Tenor and Soprano saxophone, composer
Sandy Evans is an internationally renowned saxophonist and composer with a passion for improvisation and new music. Sandy was awarded an OAM for her work as a musician in 2010. Sandy received the Inaugural Bell Award For Australian Jazz Musician of The Year 2003, a Young Australian Creative Fellowship, APRA Award for Jazz Composition of the Year, 2 Mo Awards and three ARIA Awards.
She leads the Sandy Evans Trio, and co-leads the internationally acclaimed Clarion Fracture Zone. She is a member of the Australian Art Orchestra, Ten Part Invention, The catholics, austraLYSIS, Kim Sanders and Friends and the saxophone quartet SNAP. In 2004, together with composer Tony Gorman she launched the critically acclaimed 8 piece ensemble GEST8.
Sandy toured nationally with her trio in 2010 with the assistance of Sound Travellers.
Sandy recently recorded a 60 minute extended jazz composition When The Sky Cries Rainbows for The Sandy Evans trio and special guests Phil Slater: trumpet, James Greening: trombone and Alister Spence: piano. The work was recorded for ABC Jazztrack for release in 2011. It is being released in September 2011.
Sandy has a keen interest in Indian classical music and is a student of Sarangan Sriranganathan. In January 2009 she travelled to Chennai, India, with the assistance of an Australia Council study grant to study Carnatic music with Guru Mani and B.V.Balasai. Sandy is currently undertaking a Masters at Macquarie University, researching Carnatic Jazz Intercultural music. She has recorded a CD with Sruthi Laya as part of her research. Sandy toured with Five Elements in 2010.
She collaborates regularly with Sydney-based Indian musicians Sarangan Sriranganathan and Bobby Singh.
With percussionist Tony Lewis and koto player Satsuki Odamura, she co-leads the innovative world music trio Waratah. Sandy is a member of the Bulgarian folk-jazz fusion group MARA! She is a featured soloist on Andrew Robson’s CD of music by Thomas Tallis Bearing the Bell.
Sandy delivered the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address for the New Music Network in December 2008.
Her composition Testimony about the life and music of Charlie Parker with poetry by the Pulitzer prize winning American poet Yusef Komunyakaa has been a highlight of her career. Testimony, commissioned originally by ABC Radio, was premiered by The AAO in the Concert Hall at The Sydney Opera House for The Sydney Festival in January 2002.
She has composed a major work commissioned by the Sydney Opera House: The Beatitudes, for the Sydney Children’s Choir, 6 vocal soloists and a 25 piece ensemble of young musicians.
Sandy is an experienced teacher and inaugurated a Jazz Improvisation Course for Young Women run annually by SIMA. She was the director of this course until 2010.
She performed in the award winning show, The Theft of Sita, touring with the company in Australia, America and Europe.
She played Ross Edward’s Dawn Mantras on the roof of the Sydney Opera House at the dawn of the new millenium playing. In 2000 she also performed at the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Sydney.
She has played with and written for some of the most important groups in Australian jazz since the early 1980s including Great White Noise, The Bruce Cale Orchestra, the KMA Orchestra, Kristen Cornwell Quintet, the Bernie McGann Trio, Judy Bailey, the Gai Bryant Quartet and Jeremy Sawkins. Her group Women and Children First was a ground-breaking ensemble during the 1980s, undertaking an epic seven month tour by bus around the whole of Australia. While living in Scotland in 1987, she played with the saxophone quartet SAXTC and the rhythm and blues band Tam White and The Dexters.
Studies
Sandy is a graduate of the Jazz Studies Course at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. She has also studied in the US, Germany, Hungary and the UK with the assistance of an Australia Council study grant.
Touring
She has toured extensively in Australia, Europe, Canada and Asia. Some highlights have been the Chicago Jazz festival, the North Sea Jazz Festival, WOMAD, the Brecon Festival, the Outside In festival, the Edinburgh Festival, Montreal and Vancouver Jazz festivals, the Knitting Factory (NY) the Wangaratta Jazz Festival, the Manly Jazz Festival, Sydney and Melbourne Jazz Festivals, the Brisbane Biennial, the Adelaide Festival, Jazz Yatra (India), the Sidmouth Folk Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. She has toured Russia, China, Estonia, Lithuania, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Germany, Finland, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Fiji, Western Samoa, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Hong Kong. She has been featured in several television programs for the ABC and Scottish television as well as radio broadcasts on the ABC, BBC and WDR (Germany). She appears in the Australian jazz documentaries Beyond el Rocco and Dr Jazz.
She has been featured on over 30 albums.
Pianist and composer Chris Cody has performed and recorded internationally for the last 25 years while based in Paris. He has headlined at many international festivals including Paris Quartiers d’Eté, London, Rome, Brussels Jazz Marathon, Marciac, Nantes, Ascona and Algiers and at a vast array of concert venues throughout the USA, Europe and Africa. He has worked with many outstanding international musicians including Rick Margitza, Roy Hargrove, Glenn Ferris, Carla Bruni, Annie Whitehead, Tina Arena, Michel Jonaz, Rhoda Scott and Herb Geller.
With eleven CDs of his music released on international labels he has received glowing reviews and featured on radio and television around the world, and has collaborated on over thirty other albums.
His compositions have been commissioned for the inauguration of the Australian Music Centre Paris, as well as for the Sydney Theatre Company, American Academy of Dance, Pillow Book Dance Company Pittsburg, and other French and American theatre companies, and he has composed the music for eight films, and several TV and Radio documentaries.
He was a member of the judging panel for the 2014 Freedman Fellowship, Australia.
“Magical!” Piano Magazine, France
“Exhilarating … a feast of melody… an inspiration never at fault” JazzHot, France
“Full of music and future!” Le Monde, France
“A marvellous climate, between subtle arrangements and vast spaces of improvisation…” Jazz Magazine, France
“Very luminous jazz!” Télérama, France
“This is jazz that takes off for the heights” Figaroscope, France
“A European sensibility with a nod to Debussy” Rolling Stone
“Splendidly rich and varied” Jazzwise, U.K
“A performance full of colour, humour and rhythmic movement.” Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
“A fine mix of superior technical talent and youthful inventiveness” Variety USA
AWARDS :
2010 US Department of State Federal Award, Tour of Algeria
1999 Finalist Australian National Jazz Awards
1995 Finalist Tremplin Jazz Val d’Oise
1989 Best Jazz Composition, Australian Jazz Action Society
1989 Jack Chrotowsky Prize for Jazz Piano
1979 Finalist, Roger Woodward Classical Piano Scholarship
SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY :
Chris Cody Octet: Astrolabe, CCM
Chris Cody, Not My Lover, Wave Music
Jon Handelsman, Spirit House
– Bremner Duthrie: Kabarett 33 (pianist, arranger, producer)
– Paddy Sherlock, Electric Chop Shop (pianist, arranger)
– Tuesday Warren Luminescence Quartet: One Drop of Water
– Tuesday Warren Luminescence Quartet: Si Seulement
– Jocelyn Moen, La Rouge Qui Bouge, (pianist, arranger, producer),(Roadsign)
– Wendy Lee Taylor, Compilation, Jewel, (Smoove Records, Japan)
– Chris Cody Coalition, Conscript (CHC001, Nocturne, France)
– Wendy Taylor: Lets Do It , pianist, arranger (Crystal CDM 16)
– Freyja: This Girl (pianist, arranger, producer), FR626
– Chris Cody Coalition with Glenn Ferris: Midnight Tide (Cristal/Harmonia Mundi)
– On The Corner: Four (Amrap)
– Chris Cody Coalition: Music for Don Juan (STC 501)
– Elisabeth Green, Biodiversity, (UWS BD02)
– Chris Cody Coalition: Oasis (Naxos 86018-2)
(APRA nomination for best jazz album 1998)
– The Many Faces of Naxos Jazz (Naxos 86040)
– Chris Cody Coalition (Quoi de Neuf Docteur 032)
– Skander Guetari : Alwan (Bynzart, SG06131928)
– Gervais Koffe: The African Diaspora (Forest)
– Caroline Lynn: The Shaman’s Kiss (Newmarket 3113.2)
– Paddy Sherlock and the Jump Jive Five: The Louis Jordan Show
– Paddy Sherlock and the Swingin Lovers
– Jeff Hoffman: Good Thing (MDM 101)
– Beigel Daisy Toasts (Virgin France)
– Stefan Hugye: Sympathisers (Xopf 020)
Concerts
with Carla Bruni, Michel Jonasz, Tina Arena, Roy Hargrove, Antonio Hart, Rick Margitza, Rhoda Scott, Herb Geller, Glenn Ferris, Stephano di Battista, Yves Robert, Sonny Murray, Jason Marsalis, Marcel Azzola, Enrico Macias, Stéphane Belmondo, James Morrison, Barry Altschul, Frank Lacy, Annie Whitehead, Ari Brown, Graham Haynes, Sarah Lazarus, Steve Lehman, Dave O’Higgins, Joe Lee Wilson, Daniel Yvinec, François Théberge, Paris Jazz Orchestra, Lisa Simone, Caneiro Edmundo, Alfredo Rodriguez, Brice Wassy, Rasul Siddik, Wayne Dockery, George Brown, Fabio Morgera, Sangoma Everett, Peter Gritz, Prakash Sharwal, Amar Sundy, Carl Schlosser, Larry Gillespie, Jean-Loup Lognon, Jean-Jacques Avenel, Vic Pitts, Gordon Brisker, Don Burrows, Sandy Evans, Adrian Mears, Tim Hopkins, Miroslav Bukovsky, James Greening, Phil Slater, Julien Wilson etc.
Selected Festivals
Festivals of London, Paris, Rome, Brussels, Marciac, Derry, Dars Es Salaam, Festival de Francophonie, Stockholm, Europe Youth Festival, Antwerp,, Marseille, Fête de la Fraternité, Les Rendez-Vous de L’Erdre, Ascona, Nantes, Le Havre, Quartiers d’Ete, Musiques à Bagatelle, Jazz Balade, L’Art 2000 Paris, Xopf New Music Basle, St. Tropez, Mégeves, Viasse, Man Ray Festival, Deauville, Martin Luther King, UNESCO Charlie Parker, Marcoussis, St. Cergues, St. Gilles Croix de Vie, Pau, New Music Festival Paris, Arts et Mouvants, France, Sydney Festival, Wangaratta, Newcastle, Manly, South American Music Festival of Sydney, Australian Music Festival, Australian Music Convention, Bach and Beyond, Australian International Music Show, etc.
22 June 1937 – 17 September 2013
was an alto saxophonist. He began his career in the late 1950s and remained active as a performer, composer and recording artist until near the end of his life.
From Sydney, McGann first came to prominence as part of a loose alliance of modern jazz musicians who performed at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar, Sydney in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
He led the Bernie McGann Trio and Bernie McGann Quartet through his career. The most well-known lineup of the Trio was McGann (alto sax), John Pochee (drums), Lloyd Swanton (bass), with the addition of Warwick Alder (trumpet) in the quartet. However in his latter years, his regular quartet featured Andrew Dickeson (drums), Brendan Clarke (bass) and Warwick Alder (trumpet).
Read Bernie’s obituary from The Australian
Career highlights
• 1974 – Founding member of The Last Straw (jazz group).
• 1980–82 – Played support to US jazz artists, including Freddie Hubbard, Lester Bowie, and Dave Liebman.
• 1981 – Played and recorded with US saxophonist Sonny Stitt.
• 1983 – Studied in New York on a grant from The Australia Council.
• 1986 – Bernie McGann Trio toured Australia with US saxophonist Dewey Redman.
• 1987 – Toured with The Last Straw to Tasmania. Recorded two albums, one trio and one quartet, for Emanem which received critical acclaim internationally
• 1988 – Toured Australia and USA with the Australian Jazz Orchestra, a special Bicentennial project. Feature artist in award-winning documentary film Beyond El Rocco.[4] The Last Straw tour of New Zealand jazz festivals with an Australia Council international touring grant. Bernie McGann Trio played at London’s famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, before touring jazz festivals in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, India and Malaysia.
• 1989 – Solo artist at Auckland’s Jazz & Blues Festival. Appeared with The Last Straw at the prestigious Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada. Performed with Nat Adderley
• 1990 – Toured USSR with The Last Straw, performing to enthusiastic audiences at jazz festivals including Leningrad
• 1992 – ARIA award for Bernie McGann Trio CD ‘Ugly Beauty’, Spiral Scratch MO Award for Bernie McGann Trio in Jazz Group of the Year[3]
• 1993 – Toured Canadian Jazz Festivals
• 1994 – Australian Mo Awards for Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year.
• 1995 – ARIA award for Bernie McGann Trio CD ‘McGann McGann’ on Rufus Records, which featured McGann originals
• 1996 – Toured Canada and Europe including Northsea Jazz Festival and Munchener Klaviersummer.
• 1997 – Bernie McGann Trio appeared at the Chicago Jazz Festival. ARIA award for Bernie McGann Trio CD Playground (Rufus Records).
• 1998 – Wins the Don Banks Music Award, the first time it has been awarded to a non-classical musician/composer.[5] Launch of biography Bernie McGann: A Life in Jazz by Geoff Page (Kardooraire Press)
