Sunman (Rufus 062)

Reviewed by John Shand/The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, March 24,2001

One of the more arrant pieces of nonsense about jazz is that achieving a personal voice on one's instrument and having original things to say are attributes that may be attained only after years of immersing oneself in the music of the greats; anyone who leaps straight out of the musical womb with pretensions to originality is a fake.

Across the arts, of course, there are those who come up with something of their own, fully formed, at an early age, others who take time to find what they wish to. Say.

Two examples of the former on the Sydney jazz scene would be guitarist James Muller and saxophonist Andrew Robson. Robson's second album is a phenomenally mature work in both conception and execution. In part, this is due to working with such hugely experienced collaborators as bassist Steve Elphick and drummer Hamish Stuart, but primarily it is because Robson simply sounds like no-one else as he offers ideas of rampant beauty that are unburdened with intellectual inhibitions.

The combination of earthiness, emotional directness and grace is as ancient as it is futuristic. Above all, it seems natural: something a human would inevitably do with a saxophone. Sound has much to do with this. Most alto saxophonists make a piping, piercing noise. As well as exploiting this possibility, Robson achieves a richness - a munificence - across the range of the horn. The melodies themselves can have a flight-of-fancy lightness about them while being loaded with compelling expressiveness.

Elphick always opts for the right rather than the clever option. His solo on the sprightly Five Will Get You Ten typifies the commonality of his approach with Robson's, the seemingly playful lines suddenly acquiring unforeseen emotional weight.

Stuart, always a drummer to make the music feel good, has become ever more adept at also letting it breathe, at opening up options rather than closing them down. He finds imaginative solutions to the complete gamut, from the somber Chant to the dizzy swing of Spin.

The recorded jazz coming out of New York is seldom on this level.

Three years passed between Sydney based saxophonist Andrew Robson's debut trio album,Scrum (Rufus), and this follow-up. That's a significant time in a young career, and you'd expect to hear it accounted for by a player of Robson's calibre.

This new disc indeed captures the deepening maturity that has been evident in his live performances for some time. Robson doesn't mess around; his live work is hallmarked by seriousness. That's not to say he's ernest or dry. His playing is carefully measured out but emotionally direct, as if he's calmly, intently singing to you. Though there are a couple of fast tunes, in which he chordally peels the skin off with deadly technique and quickfire inventivness, most of these are slow tunes played on alto or close-miked soprano which create an enthrallingly intimate space. In contrast to the remote, indifferent production od the first album, Robson's fight into your ear.

He engages you and doesn't let go, though he is never hectoring. He knows what he wants to say and doesn't waste a note. He has arrived as an important player. The future's bright.

Music as exhilarating as this exposes much jazz for the wretchedly safe art it is. Here the gloves were off and chances were taken which put a premium on the ears and the musicality of the participants. No-one was found wanting.

Among the many sources of wonder and joy was the players' ability to toy with the time. Pulses emerged, mirage-like, in spontaneously composed rubato sections, to fade again, evolve or solidity. Drummer Hamish Stuart was the most assured I have heard him in such a context. His playing brimmed with concrete options for the others to pursue, while remaining supple and subtle enough not to bulldoze the music into corners from which there was no escape.

Bassist Steve Elphick was in his element: anchoring, suggesting directions and liaising between the skittering drums and the mighty array of horns. His solos embodied his ability to say so much with so few notes, due largely to the magnanimity of his sound.

The assemblage of three of this country's very best saxophonists was as good as it looked on paper. Edouard Bronson, Sandy Evans and Andrew Robson share a love of communicative expression, as opposed to musical artifice. Their approaches diverge wildly, however. Evans (tenor and soprano) commanded attention with playing that was always bold, mostly magisterial, and often kaleidoscopic in its range; Robson (alto and soprano) was more quicksilvery, darting between ideas and insinuating others; Bronson (tenor, soprano, clarinet and slide didgeridoo) reinvented his style from piece to piece and not just because of his multiple instruments. His tenor, for instance could be a vehicle for austere probing or a simple motif, or an outpouring of emotional complexity, or for digging down to the grittiest R 'n' B imaginable.

One swooping clarinet cadenza was as profoundly moving as the climax of a Puccini aria. This band must not be a one-off project.

This country has tended to consider cultural cringe a uniquely local phenomenon, when in fact it is almost universal, and merely the all-too-human trait of needing outside approval to believe something is worthwhile. The attitude to Mara! Is a case in point.

Some 17 years into the existence of this quintet (who uniquely blend Eastern European folk music and jazzy improvisation) most Australians would still say:"Who?" Meanwhile, the band's European profile continues to build inexorably towards the acknowledgement that is their due. Eventually we will catch up with the foreigners and Mara! will be widely hailed as a national treasure.

As things stand, Australian performances are rare treat between overseas tours. Here they were launching their brilliant new album, Live In Europe, recorded last year at the European Broadcasting Union Festival in the Czech Republic. Although this concert only spasmodically attained the heights of that captured on the CD, Mara! has long been at the stage where a lesser night, by its own very high standards, can still result in a special evening and a performance still sprinkled with sparks of superb music.

On singer Mara Kiek's Na Dolu, Paul Cutlan's typically stunning melodic invention on bass clarinet ran from shrill trills to evil growls, while saxophonist Andrew Robson set his saxophone tearing at the seams of the traditional Macedonian tune Sandansko Oro.

Mara herself was especially compelling on the old Italian song Riturnella and on a Persian love song, Tobiyo Timo Beneshyn. Here she squeezed meaning from the lyric - despite the language being unintelligible to the listener - like cherished memories being dredged from the brain. Steve Elphick's solo then sustained that mood over Llew Kiek's tender guitar.

The Ensemble really hit its straps on a rollicking traditional Macedonian piece called the The Big Dance, when the bass and Mara's tapan drum fused like a throbbing, big-capacity engine, to which Llew's bouzouki added the final drive. Over this the saxophones wailed - Cutlan's soprano solo interludes a frenzy of colour and light - while Mara sang with stunning intensity. Imagine how good one of their great nights is.

"An absolute gem."

"This is a remarkable debut."

"Music at once so mature, so fresh, so open and so coherent is uncommonplace, anywhere."

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Given the band's name, it was apposite that The World According to James's concert should be a barrage of new experiences.

Despite the demure title, A Little Peace had some scorching moments, highlighting drummer Toby Hall's fluency, while pushing energy levels relentlessly.

The scene shifted dramatically for Mossman. Leader James Greening shifted from his primary instrument, trombone, to the intrinsically elfin effect of pocket trumpet, while Hall lent an exotic effect with shakers.

The raport and consequent preparedness to take risks in this band were in abundant evidence on saxophonist Andrew Robson's Greetings from the New World. At one point Hall ceased riding the cymbals to enter a phrase in tandem with Greening. Bar after bar they were at it, second-guessing each other, and once in there was no easy way out. That they could do this without tripping each other up and eventually emerge with a resolution was thrilling.

That phrase finished, the risks continued: Hall and bassist Steve Elphick played with the time as though it were on one of those extending leashes, while Greening, back on trombone, skated over the top like a four-wheel-drive traversing potholes.

Wishing had a gloriously buoyant groove from Elphick, who anchored the harmonic movement and made it coherent, while avoiding routine solutions. Robson displayed a similar ability to find unforeseen implications and extensions of his own phrases.

Medicine Man featured a trombone solo packed with zany one-liners of considerable agility.Perhaps the most telling hallmark of Greening's project is the way devices from all styles and periods of jazz are allowed to collide with a strapping modernism. It's just part of the journey.

John Shand

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