"Cool Nights, Hot Jazz"

I'm excited to announce that I am embarking on an extra dimension to my career as a curator/artistic director of jazz festivals. I am working with a fantastic arts centre in Brisbane, the Brisbane Powerhouse. It used to be a power station but some years ago was converted into a multi-venue arts centre, with theatres, bars etc. We are starting with a mini-festival called "Cool Nights, Hot Jazz" August 5-7 which I have curated. It will open on Fri August 5 with a solo recital from Joe Chindamo in the Powerhouse Theatre. On the Saturday night the international talent will be Finlandia Jazz Trio, led by saxophonist Jukka Perko from Finland. I will be closing the Festival on Sunday Aug 7 with my trio featuring vocalist Elana Stone. Before and after each of these three Powerhouse Theatre concerts the best Brisbane bands will play free performances in the Powerhouse's Spark Bar. The three main events I described will ticket at $27.50/$22.50 each. We will sell all 3 concerts together on a special ticket we are calling a "hot jazz trio", $67.50 for all three. Tickets are on sale from the Brisbane Powerhouse from next Tuesday. In 2006 I will work with the venue on curating a large-scale international jazz festival.

New Work

I have just been funded by the Australia Council to compose a 50-minute suite of solo piano music.

Itinerary for May International Tour

DATE	CITY	EVENT
Monday May 9	Bucharest, Romania	International Music Festival Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest.
Tuesday May 10	Bucharest, Romania	International Music Festival Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest.
Wednesday May 11	Bucharest, Romania	International Music Festival Jeunesses Musicales Bucharest.
Friday May 13	Istanbul, Turkey	Nardis Jazz Club
Saturday May 14	Istanbul, Turkey	Nardis Jazz Club
Tuesday May 17	London, UK	Meeting
Thursday May 19	Bangkok, Thailand	Performance at Residence of Australian Ambassador
Friday May 20	Bangkok, Thailand	Performance at Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Hotel
Saturday May 21	Bangkok, Thailand	Performance at Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Hotel

Curating

Last Friday I began work on curating a jazz festival for a major Australian performance venue. More on that later.

Newspaper feature and radio interview/performance

Today I had a feature article about my new jazz project prominently positioned on the arts pages of the Sydney Morning Herald. You can read it online here. Also I am doing a radio interview and performing live on ABC Radio 702 Sydney Breakfast with Angela Catterns between 8:30am and 9am (Australian EST) Thursday April 20. If you are not in Sydney it streams live on the Web here. For those in Sydney I will be doing a lengthy interview the same day at 12:15pm with Paula Langlands on Eastside Radio 89.7FM

Side-Wise Score finished!

I finished the score of my Side-Wise Suite for jazz sextet today. It's a suite that flows as one continuous piece and it will run the entire set, about 50 minutes. There are many sections of different moods and tempos all metrically interrelated by polyrhythmic metric modulation. It is also a showcase for the creative abilities of wonderful band I have; James Muller (guitar), Dave Panichi (trombone), Dan Waples (alto), Cameron Undy (bass) and Felix Bloxsom (drums).

The piece will be premiered in my two-night season at Sydney's Side-On Cafe this Friday April 22 and Saturday April 23. I am have some media coverage this week in honour of this, a feature article in the press and a couple of radio interviews. I'll provide details here soon: non-Sydney people will be able to listen to the ABC radio interview streaming live on the Web

Transcript of radio interview

Some time ago I did a long (1 hour) interview with Andrew Ford for Radio National's The Music Show. Someone at the ABC has laboriously transcribed the entire conversation.