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.