Just at the moment – and it’s a terrible thing to admit – I am obsessed with a recording I made in 1997 for the ABC, featuring myself on piano with Geoff Hughes playing guitar. Just the two of us. And piano and guitar is a sort of unusual pairing – someone once said that given their similar ranges and chordal roles the instruments are inclined to morph into one another. But I don’t think that’s a problem here, plus we had a lot of fun, and right now I can’t stop listening to what we did.

We recorded together because we were invited by Mal Stanley, representing Jim McLeod, to generate local content for Jazztrack. These were the days, at the ABC, when it was properly funded and all the right people seemed to be in charge and it wasn’t the festival of mindless populism that it is now. One of my scholarly projects, should I live to see it completed, is a book outlining how the opening of the ABC Centre Southbank, the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues, and Bennetts Lane Jazz Club combined to make Melbourne the centre of the Australian jazz world, at least for a while. It was quite an incredible time.

Now I was 25 when this all happened, and I was in the first year of my doctoral study (more about that in a moment) and I’d not have imagined my playing was anywhere near where I wanted it to be. I had made King, Dude and Dunce with Browne – Haywood – Stevens, and our Sudden in a shaft of sunlight was within the coming year. But this unusual project was a delightful thing with which to be involved, so I leapt at the opportunity.

Geoff is a simply wonderful guitarist, and like Ben Robertson shares a lot of the harmonic thinking to which I am disposed. Ben, being so humble, would say he’s learnt from me and my tunes but his capacity to receive what it is I’ve written and to see possibilities within it is a gift from the heavens. Same with Geoff. Incredibly creative, incredibly receptive, truly collaborational.

We recorded seven pieces – one of my regrets is that we didn’t put enough down to constitute an album – and there are four of my pieces, one of Geoff’s, ‘Progression’ by Lee Konitz and Duke Ellington’s ‘African flower’. I’m going to talk you through them and give you a listen, if you’re interested, because otherwise all this work is buried. (Apologies for all the outsized photos of me that accompany the audio. Once upon a time I seemed to know how to put items in from Soundcloud just with a little audio map thingy, but either they’ve changed the software and I can’t anymore, or (more likely) I’ve forgotten.)

I am discovering that what we entitled ‘Progression’ is actually a tune called ‘Tautology’, the second selection on the album from which ‘Progression’ comes. Named Subconscious-Lee, it was recorded in 1949 and sounds very fresh even today. I made a chart from the recording Geoff gave me, which was probably on a cassette or something so I didn’t have the album in front of me. I actually saw Lee Konitz in person once when he was in Melbourne and came to the VCA. He didn’t play ‘Tautology’ that day, I don’t think. Listen for some uncharacteristically genuine swing from me at about 1:46. And Geoff’s fabulous lines over my (again, uncharacteristically) spare accompaniment when his improvisation begins.

‘Chantra’ is a glorious tune written by Geoff. Its subtlety and gentle feeling just never get old. Tonality with only the suggestions of functionality – it’s superb work. Two heads, and then he leaves all the improvising to me. Playing over his exquisite changes, then a pedal on E – with an abbreviated head to conclude.

‘African flower (Fleurette Africaine)’ (Duke Ellington) appeared on the wonderful album Money Jungle that featured Ellington on piano, Charles Mingus on bass, and Max Roach on drums. What a line-up. Everyone knows the stories about Mingus and the Ellington orchestra, but this date was miraculous. I first learnt about the recording at a gig at the Limerick Arms Hotel where Paul Grabowsky was leading some band that included one or two horns, and introduced a piece he had written (now, it seems, lost) inspired by it. I’d never heard about it so I raced to JB to collect my copy. And I’ve loved it ever since. I think again it was Geoff who suggested we play this, and I really like the way the instruments sound together. We stick fairly closely to the original arrangement, but Geoff’s way of putting both the upper melodic lines together is masterful. We share melodic duties as the tune goes on, and there is no improvisation, but I think the point is made.

‘Probationary candidacy blues’ is so titled because in 1997 this is exactly what I was. In the first year of my PhD, I was a probationary candidate, and had to prove my worth before I was admitted to my second year. Now I don’t often write blues: there is one on Media vita called ‘Psuedepigrapha’ and the improvising on ‘a.o.’ from with whom you can be who you are is on a twelve-bar pattern, but it’s atypical. I guess if I was going to get the blues about anything in 1997 it was probably my probationary candidacy. And I’m very pleased with this piece, and how we deal with it. The way Geoff’s improvisation picks up rhythmically almost exactly the last phrase of mine is fabulous, and his manner of dealing with my restless determination to muck with the changes is really rewarding. At 3:45 when I change the accompanying style to something that many people might have found intolerable, he is right there. There is so much fun in this playing that you’d never know I was shitting my pants that the university might say it could struggle along without me.

The next selection is ‘In angel arms’ which was to appear on the second Browne – Haywood – Stevens album, Sudden in a shaft of sunlight. That disc wasn’t recorded until May of 1998 so I guess it was just that the tune was in my head as we vaguely prepared. It’s one of the roughly two thousand tunes I’ve written with Sall in mind – they were her arms, of course. Geoff’s harmonic nous with my not-always-friendly changes is so wonderful. I can’t say how magnificent it is to find musical friends who are willing to explore in concert. (See what I did there?)

‘Music for Meredith’ was written for a friend who isn’t really a friend anymore, but with whom I had a lengthy and very rewarding relationship that I’ll always treasure. She was also the dedicatee of a movement on with whom – the set of alternating variations. This piece also appears on the album I released with Shelley Scown, This autumn year, in a solo setting. That’s quite different, and if you want to hear it you can find it at my Bandcamp. Geoff, I’ll admit with a blush, loved this piece and kept telling me so. I’m proud when another musician likes anything I’ve done, so to have the chance to play this piece with him was indescribably marvellous. This is an example I sometimes give of my affection for contrasting flat and sharp sides. It’s a flat-key tune, but I use C-flat as B to get to A and then C-sharp minor just briefly before guiding things back to where they began. I got this from Liszt, of course. There is so much logic to the way Geoff constructs his ideas over the changes – I never tire of hearing it. And he leaves me right alone to play over it – perhaps a wise move, but either way one indicative of his sympathetic and co-operative approach.

This brings us to the final selection, ‘Cardigan patrol’. Sall was my girlfriend in 1997, and in those days she was always on the lookout for the perfect cardigan. So ‘Cardigan patrol’ was what you were on if you found yourself in the city on a Saturday afternoon, and there was no tiring in the chase. I actually really like this piece, and I’m very glad I wrote it. I was thinking about guitar and piano as I did, as it was composed for this session, so there are things that I can’t play (although I’ve tried) if I endeavour to deliver it solo. I’m stunned by Geoff’s limitless capacity to utilise the extensions of the chords in his melodic playing. All the lines make so much sense, but they’re unexpected and so gratifying for that. I also like the way the last three notes of the composition as the same as the first three.

So there it is. One day, in August 1997, so long ago, but so rewarding (for me, at least) to revisit. Heartfelt thanks to Mal, and to Jim, for supporting local music as they did. For having the imagination to bring together two genuinely sympathetic souls who mightn’t have thought of the meeting for themselves. (Unless I’m misremembering and it was our idea, but I don’t think so.) I’ll say it to my final hour: to have the opportunity to play with musical friends as congenial as this is an incomparable joy.

26/vii/2025

If you’ve just read the heading and said to yourself, well there’s precious little of that, then I’m with you. Most contemporary popular music is staggeringly deficient, and the same goes for musicals. The imagination is in ridiculously short supply, and the will to differ virtually non-existent. No-one seems to know the difference between tonic and dominant, and interrupted means someone spilled their coffee in their lap while they were deciding whether to write in F or in C.

But I am going to give two examples where I think the musical craftsmanship is of the highest order, and argue that the composers of these selections deserve to be taken seriously as genuinely creative artists.  The first is from Elton John, and the second from Prince.

Now neither of these artists worked consistently at the top of their game; whole albums of particularly the later work of Prince are forgettable, and Elton John changed with fashion to create some mind-numbingly ordinary work. But when everything was going right, well, look out.

Elton John’s ‘Tiny dancer’ wasn’t a raging success when first released, in part at least because at six minutes and seventeen seconds it is quite long for a pop tune. In Cameron Crowe’s wonderful picture Almost Famous the song plays in a bus as the band is touring across America, and everyone sings along. This appearance actually gave the song a second life, and took everyone by surprise. When Mr John played it in Melbourne on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, he had modified the melody because his voice apparently no longer reaches the high C. It still sounded fabulous.

The thing about this piece that strikes me is the patience demonstrated by the composer. The piano introduction is only two chords, and these are the foundation of the verse that follows. It consists of an AABA structure, that is then repeated when the rhythm section joins in. The piano introduction is reprised before the song goes to another section, and only after this do we hear the chorus. The time spent getting there has not been wasted, and the satisfaction of its realisation is genuinely moving.

Don’t you wish that people had the wherewithal to resist going straight to the chorus, to give everything away as soon as possible? That perhaps they had something else up their sleeve to postpone satisfaction and to make the resolution that much more worthwhile?

My favourite – and I actually think it might be his best – album by Prince is Sign o the times. I’ve written about it before because it was so important to me when I was verging on adulthood. The film was a revelation, as I’ve said in the past, and it’s one of the few things from that part of my life that I remember fondly. Meeting Sall in 1988 was far and away the best thing that happened in that decade, but a lot of the rest of it was trash.

The title track was written about in the notes to the Prince boxed set as one of the few times you had an inkling of Prince’s politics. He sang about sex all the time, and some of that was miraculous, but rarely did he deal with current events. The lyrics here are extraordinary: ‘Sister killed her baby cos she couldn’t afford to feed it and we’re sending people to the moon; September my cousin tried reefer for the very first time – now he’s doing horse. It’s June.’

The spareness of the orchestration is an object lesson: the use of the bass drum with is repeated figure and less frequently the snare drum, the marimba-like upper part volleying between Cs and the sensational bass figure – I’ve no idea how any of this was done but it is so staggeringly original. And again, there is a patience here that is absolutely superb. To work with only a single chord, if it even is that – a tonality of C, let’s say, with the suggestion of a flattened seventh and a minor third in the bass – is so restrained, and when this is left for F minor and a very brief V chord the effect is extraordinary. And the first time this happens we don’t know yet but it’s incomplete; on its second iteration it is extended so that the title of the song can be enunciated. This is quite marvellous; when Prince actually utters the words ‘Sign o the times’ the gratification is simply wonderful. He could simply have repeated himself but he had more to give. Craftsmanship. How I wish he hadn’t died.

When I wrote about Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts I spoke of hearing them as though that were the first time, although that only happens once and for the audience that attended his concerts in Japan they had the irreplaceable experience of hearing the music birthed in real time. I can’t recall the first time I heard ‘Sign o the times’ and it may actually have been when I saw the concert at the Kino. It has however become something I rely on. Prince’s way of leading up to the tune, with the dramatised passage outside the auditorium, is breathtaking. The chords that precede the song’s opening are not on the album, but they make such a lot of sense. Every time I see this I am amazed.

If I had a third choice it would be Talking Heads’ ‘Life during wartime’, performed live in the Stop Making Sense concert, because of the way the two chords are played against each other, the ‘This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco’ on the V of the verse’s I, repeated so that you expect it but then in the last instance it doesn’t appear. This is restraint, patience, awareness of an uncommon kind in popular music. I travel in the car with my third kid and always they want to listen to Smooth FM. It’s ghastly and I hate it, and most of the music the station plays comes from the 1980s so I’m already too familiar with it, but I long for moments when someone has made a wise, a decent, choice. Too rare but so precious.

28/vi/2025