Sand Lines, Jeremy Rose Quartet, review by John McBeath
courtesy of the Australian
Sydney saxophonist Jeremy Rose has been working with the musicians on his latest album for the past ten years, and these six lengthy pieces were developed over a two year period, but Rose is also very active in a variety of other groups: The Vampires, The Strides, Compass Quartet, Cameron Undy’s 20th Century Dog, Ensemble Offspring, and Earshift Orchestra. Amongst numerous achievements Rose has scored a Bell Award, and this year won an APRA AMCOS Professional Development Award worth $15,000.
The title track is a good introduction to the collection of originals, with Jackson Harrison’s opening piano flourishes and the delectable upright bass notes of Alex Boneham – who’s since relocated to Los Angeles – ahead of one of several themes stated by Rose’s soprano sax with rhythmic punctuation from drummer James Waples. All of this serves as a build-up intro for Rose’s lift-off solo of swirling excitement aided by Harrison’s substructural chord stabs, before a curling piano solo travels on with ceaseless invention.
Guitarist Carl Morgan is a guest artist on two tracks including The Long Way Home, a slow ballad that wanders expressively adding rhythmic accents for appropriate solos from alto and guitar. Mind Over Matter is a soft post-bop tribute to the late altoist David Ades, ‘a mentor, friend and fellow surfer’ for Rose.
Rose explains that the music uses improvised sections that build from the notated material, ‘creating a blurred line between improvisation and composition’, and he has assembled a group of players perfectly capable of understanding and interpreting these elegant works.
[…] Sandlines […]