Some music transcends style. This is different from merely combining disparate styles, and results from extraordinary purity and focus in the process of creation. It is almost as though the ideas have come from a vacuum, rather than being a distillation.
Pianist Stu Hunter has never made a CD under his own name before, but chances are you’ve heard him. He has appeared on more than 60 CDs, and with his piano-for-hire hat on has performed with such big-name artists as Portishead, silverchair, the John Butler Trio, Jackie Orszaczky and Russell Crowe.
The music on this CD is some of the most strikingly original, in conception and execution, that I have encountered, and not just within Australian jazz circles. It is also numbingly beautiful – often gracefully so and sometimes majestically, as when Matt Keegan’s tenor saxophone floods part three of this six-part, 50-minute suite (augmented by a haunting prelude and dramatic little interlude).
Like any rose worth the name, it also has thorns: both sonic surprises to re-boot a mind in danger of being lulled into reverie, and also moments of sharp anguish that almost hurt physically as well as emotionally.
Read the full review in The Sydney Morning Herald
