Marc Hannaford
The Garden of Forking Paths
(Extreme)
Whatever the merits of the ABC’s Jazz Meets Classical events, they are not a novel idea. You can trace it all back to the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, which premiered Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue and also featured jazz and classical ensembles on stage.
A so-called third-stream movement was well under way by the time Lalo Schifrin emerged and, within that, a more puzzling – on the face of it – excursion into atonality.
Why? The blues is not a sentimental music but it has gained a nostalgic potency due to its longevity and its huge influence on rock, jazz and country.
The musicians on pianist Marc Hannaford’s disc seek to strip that away in favour of a kinetic music, unsentimental but intense and full of hard, bright dynamism. It stands in contrast to much rock- and world music-influenced Australian jazz.
What is atonal music? Very simply, the 12 semitones of the western scale are treated equally, leading to frequent use of chromatic intervals which, lacking sentimental associations, can seem cold or at least abstract. But it is a coherent language that can be used to ultra-subtle and ultra-violent effect.
Tranquillity and fierce dynamism can move simultaneously on this disc. Drummer Ken Edie can break the time up with hits as hard as bullets ricocheting off rock. Yet he also creates delicate thickets of texture: a feeling of rushing through dry bushes.
In the three tracks on which trumpeter Scott Tinkler appears, the fire and crashing bursts of momentum, the sudden stops and outbursts as trumpet and drums, bass and piano track and oppose each other, can make the attuned listener shout out; though some may cringe.
Read the full review on The Sydney Morning Herald website.
