James Morrison Sextet

THE James Morrison Sextet is set to kick start the 20th Kiama Jazz and Blues Festival when they perform at Shellharbour Workers' Club on Friday March 9.

Band Walks Away With Most Of The Brass

Fourteen-year-old Lachlan Dellar has every right to beam as brightly as his tenor horn. After all, he is the under 15 and under 19 NSW solo Champion of Champions.

A Night Full Of Tunes

SYDNEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Meet the Music Concert, May 20 THIS Meet the Music concert sure was a night of tunes. Rachmaninov's third piano concerto took up the first half with an almost embarrassment of melodic richness. Richard Mills's Symphonic Pictures from The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Memory Of A Tranquil Age

IN YOUTH it was very pleasant to sit in a cafe and inspect the assembled pseuds, and it was humbling and good for the soul to realise that, as far as the weirdo in the corner was concerned, you were part of the assembly, just as was he from your viewpoint. Profound meditations like these need to

Tracking The Serious In Play

SO, FAREWELL to you, Dexter Gordon. Elegant force and the joyful motor rhythm - those were your hallmarks ... this "poem" with apologies to E.J.Thribbs of Private Eye. The Best Of Dexter Gordon is a good selection from a series of buoyant early 1960s albums. In one of those s

Marvels Of Miles On The Flugel

WHEN Buddy Holly died, his small record collection included a 45 rpm containing four tracks from Miles Davis's Miles Ahead album. According to reports, Holly wanted to sing either with Davis or in a setting that echoed the sonorities of Gil Evans's orchestrations. I still have a copy of that 45,

Farewell Jim At Long Last

JUDGING by the events over the past few weeks, anyone could easily be excused for thinking that the 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist, James Morrison, has made more farewell appearances than Dame Nellie Melba and Gladys Moncrieff combined. The Jazz Action Society began the series of farewell

Kicking Tenor Swings Hard

HEARING the American cornettist Warren Vache left little doubt as to why the late, so-called King of Swing, Benny Goodman, sent for him to join his band during the 1970s. Or, for that matter, why Vache was chosen to play the role of the legendary Bix Beiderbecke in the New York Repertory Company pr