Melbourne International Jazz Festival
May 3-13,
Hamer Hall, Crown casino and other venues
THE choice offered at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival this year has been extraordinary: half a dozen near-legendary US musicians and band leaders, 50 other players from countries as diverse as Israel, Cuba, Denmark and Brazil, plus 150 Australians.
Festival-goers have had the opportunity to hear live performers who they previously may only have known from their albums. All the US drawcards are in their late 60s and have impressive pedigrees – pianists McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock; saxophonists Dave Liebman and Pharoah Sanders; and vibraphonist Gary Burton – but arguably their best years are behind them.
They’ve all played with just about everyone of note and each has pioneered at least one aspect of their music. Hancock and Corea both played with Miles Davis and led the way in electronic jazz-rock fusion in the 1970s. Burton initiated a technique for playing vibes with four mallets, Tyner spent five years in groundbreaking work with tenor giant John Coltrane, and Sanders, who also played with Coltrane, struck out in highly individualistic ways with free jazz.
It’s a commercial program, which is perfectly justifiable. A more representative presentation of contemporary US jazz, however, would have included at least one of many active avant-garde groups: say, from New York.
The 2000-seat Hamer Hall was sold out for Hancock’s opening night concert. He wrote Watermelon Man – an enormous hit – when he was 21, and at 23 joined the famous Davis quintet for six years. He changed tack later with a heavily electronic album, Headhunters. For the MIJF, he concentrated mostly on his jazz-rock fusion compositions with an overdose of wah-wah effects and rifle-crack backbeats.
Things changed when another pianist, Corea, came on to reprise some of his and Hancock’s duo piano work from the late ’70s, notably in On Green Dolphin Street, packed with fast running exchanges. These mostly repetitious performances, re-roasting old chestnuts, were disappointing: each of these players is capable of far greater musical depth and exploration.
Saturday night produced another twosome: Corea with Gary Burton on the chiming liquidity of the vibraphone. The long-established duo played mostly tracks from previous albums, especially Crystal Silence, (1972). Burton was a joy to watch, moving four mallets in a flashing blur on uptempo pieces and slowing to a flowing, semi-classical form on Corea’s 1986 composition, Brasilia. The limited tonal variation available, and the extra rhythmic load on Corea’s left hand, could have been alleviated wth the addition of an acoustic bass or guitar.
Elsewhere in the festival, musical gems sparkled. A Danish quintet led by trumpeter Jens Winther played all originals in a hard-bop style suggestive of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with a contemporary Eurospin. Winther ended a ballad, Honesty, by playing a long cadenza with his trumpet bell inside the grand piano’s open lid, inducing ghostly resonances and lingering string reverberations.
The Victorian College of the Arts fielded its 24-piece college big band, a swinging powerhouse of fine section playing and exquisitely timed, smart arrangements. Guest artist, local trumpeter Scott Tinkler, joined in for several high-powered solos.
