Ahead of this year’s Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues, Artistic Director Adrian Jackson acknowledged that while he had not intended to develop any specific theme for this year’s program, one had unwittingly emerged: the significant contribution of female musicians to jazz in this country. Thankfully, this was anything but a rallying cry for affirmative action: the composers and instrumentalists Jackson programmed to appear – among them Sandy Evans, Andrea Keller, Tamara Murphy, Fran Swinn, Shannon Barnett – are indeed among the most exciting jazz musicians currently at work in Australia.