During the past four months my musical exploits have been many and varied. Firstly as a member of the Mara Ensemble I traveled to Vietnam and Laos, China and Taiwan. These tours involved a variety of performances including workshops, concerts and festival performances. For more details about these tours and the Mara Ensemble in general go to the Mara Music home page at www.maramusic.com.au

In Australia, the past few months have also been a very busy period. In May the group featuring Sandy Evans, Eddie Bronson, Steve Elphick, Hamish Stuart and myself returned to the Side-On café in Sydney for a repeat performance.of our February gig. This second gig was recorded by the ABC for broadcast on Radio National later in the year. Special thanks to Cathy Peters, the ABC and SIMA for their support with this project. As with the first gig, we tried some different approaches to group improvisation while including the audience in the process. In the final set, this included performing a series of graphic scores that had been created by audience members during the course of the evening. Stay tuned for information on when you can hear the broadcast on ABC radio.

I am very pleased to announce that the album of film music recorded by Sydney group the Umbrellas featuring the music of legendary Italian composer Nino Rota (famous for his scores for Frederico Fellini's films) is about to be released. This project is the brainchild of composer and pianist Peter Dasent and features the playing of James Greening, Andrew Robson, Andrew Wilkie, Peter Dasent, Steve Elphick and Toby Hall. Recorded at the end of 1999, this recording documents the programme of music featured in the season of performances at last year's Adelaide festival and more recently on the Umbrellas tour of Queensland. I will post details when the release date has been finalized.

I am also very happy to announce that my trio will be performing at this years Wangaratta festival of Jazz - for information about this, Australia's premiere jazz festival click the link below. The World According to James (Greening, Robson, Elphick, Hall) will also be appearing. Check out the Wangaratta web site for information about this year's festival.

Other News

In his column for the web site allaboutjazz.com, Journalist Shane Nichols features an interview with Trombonist James Greening. This is a great site and Shane interviews a different musician every month.

From now on in an effort to keep this site more current all of the older updates can be found on the archive page. Also all of the links indicated here can also be found on the links page.

Saturday 30/6/01 6.04pm est

The Andrew Robson Trio performing earlier this year at the Side-On Cafe, Sydney

Andrew Robson Trio - News

Although reasonably quiet during our winter (due to other touring commitments) the Andrew Robson Trio has just released their second CD, SUNMAN (on the RUFUS label).

As with the first CD SCRUM, SUNMAN features the wonderful playing of Steve Elphick on Double Bass and Hamish Stuart on Drums. SUNMAN differs from SCRUM in that it was recorded direct to ˝ inch two track instead of two inch multi-track,(expertly engineered by the legendary Phil Punch) so the result is essentially a live recording with no edits or overdubs - it was just a question of picking the best takes.

We had a fantastic time playing the music and I must thank Steve, Hamish and Phil once again for the commitment and creativity they each brought to the music.

Remember copies of SUNMAN and SCRUM are available from Birdland Records (see links) or you can email me via this page for more information.

The Mara! Ensemble

The new MARA album LIVE IN EUROPE (recorded last year in the Czech republic) was launched at the Woodford folk festival in December and is now available. Just click on the Mara link below or email me for more info.

It has been (and continues to be) another big year for the MARA band. Having only recently returned from a month-long tour of Europe, the group performed another season of HOMELAND during the Sydney Olympics at Sydney's historic Circular Quay. These performances also featured the Martenitsa Choir and the world renowned abseiling troupe Legs On The Wall. These performances were are a highlight of the Olympics Arts Festival.

Since the Olympics Homeland traveled to Brisbane and presented a short season for the Brisbane Festival · If you would like to see and hear Homeland for yourself it is available on video from
ABC Online as part of the New years eve 2000 celebrations

But back to our tour…

This year's European tour began in the Czech town of Roznov for the European broadcasting union. (These performances look like being released as a live album later in the year). From the Czech republic we headed off to Rome - a two-day drive - where we played on Isola Tiberina for the Australian part of Rome's annual film festival. Our other gigs included performances at this year's World Expo in Hanover,Germany; The Leuven Festival, Belgium; Greenwich and Docklands in London, Womad Reading, UK. I guess it goes unsaid that we had an absolute ball and as I mentioned above a live recording from of the Roznov gigs will be released on CD.

For those of you reading this who may be unfamiliar with MARA!, the band performs folk dances and original material with a heavy emphasis on the rhythms of eastern Europe and improvisation (plus a whole lot of other stuff!). For more information on Mara's many and varied projects visit the new Web site at: www.maramusic.com.au

Performing with the Mara ensemble in Alessandria, Italy (pictured here with Paul Cutlan)



The World According to James

I am very happy to report that WATJ has just recorded their second album. I am also pleased to tell you that the only problem is we seem to have far too much great material - so, what to leave out?! All four band members are represented in the compositions (James Greening, Steve Elphick, Toby Hall and myself) so there is a wonderful variety of groove and melody.

The World According to James performed at the Side-On Cafe, Sydney on Friday 1st Dec (see our reviews page for more on this gig) and in the New year at the Village square in the Historic heart of Sydney's Rocks district 5/1/01 and 16/1/01. Both of these performances are from 11.00am so bring some lunch and catch one of our great modern jazz ensembles.

Anyone interested in a copy of No Job Too Small - The critically acclaimed debut CD from the World According to James can email me via this page.

The Sydney Improvised Music Association is hoping to stage a colaboration project featuring Sandy Evans, Eddie Bronson and Andrew Robson. Although we are still trying to pin down dates we are looking at early March 2001.