This year’s Melbourne International Jazz Festival (MIJF) was heavy on Grammy winners and nominees – including Esperanza Spalding, Makoto Ozone, Antonio Sánchez, Brandee Younger, Marcus Miller – a sure sign of the festival’s growing international status and capacity to attract some of the biggest names in jazz. None come bigger than Herbie Hancock, fourteen-time Grammy winner, who returned to MIJF for the first time since 2019, to headline Jazz at the Bowl, alongside bassist Marcus Miller.   

While previous iterations of Jazz at the Bowl leaned heavily toward funk and soul (Fat Freddy’s Drop, Chaka Kahn), this one placed jazz front and centre. Hancock’s standing – he may be the most recognisable jazz artist on the planet, with more than six decades of music-making under his belt, from his pioneering 1960s work with Miles Davis, through to 1980s hits like ‘Rockit’ and beyond – ensured a massive crowd, confirmation that his music crosses genres and generations.

What tenuously links Miller and Hancock is their relationship to the music of Miles Davis. In 1963, Hancock, just twenty-three years of age, assumed the piano chair in Davis’s second great quintet, alongside Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. More than two decades later, Miller would take on the compositional and arranging role for Davis’s final major recordings: Tutu and Amandla.

Miller led his quintet, featuring trumpeter Russell Gunn and saxophonist Donald Hayes, through an adventurous funk-driven set, propelled by the leader’s virtuosic display on electric bass. Rather than anchor the rhythm, Miller soloed in and around the music, conjuring the spirit of the late Jaco Pastorius, whose pioneering 1970s work with Weather Report transformed the role of electric bass in jazz.

Miller generously drew upon his work with Miles Davis, performing ‘Mr Pastorius’, a song he wrote for Davis – with Gunn beautifully re-creating Davis’s gorgeous tone on Harmon mute, fragile and glass-like – and ‘Tutu’, powered by Miller’s warm and earthy bass lines. Miller’s proficiency as a multi-instrumentalist was to the fore on ‘Gorée’, which saw him switch from electric bass to bass clarinet. Written following a visit to the historic House of Slaves in Senegal, this powerful and emotionally charged composition, a slow-burn hymn to the indomitability of the human spirit, proved a highlight.

When Hancock took to the stage, the large crowd erupted spontaneously, for here was a rare chance to acknowledge decades of creative innovation from a musician who has not just changed the course of jazz, but who has stayed the course, restless and innovative. Hancock’s performance began with an extended overture, a sprawling sound collage that trawled and dipped into his own history, conjuring themes from his classic 1960s Blue Note albums, through to his later electronic excursions. Switching seamlessly between acoustic piano and his Korg Kronos electric keyboard, Hancock allowed the music to unfold like a mighty river, with past themes drifting in and out of focus, the music constantly morphing and shifting, bold and improvised.

Hancock surrounded himself with a stellar quintet, demonstrating his willingness to be challenged by younger players – reminiscent of Miles Davis when he first took on musicians like Hancock and Tony Williams in the 1960s. Trumpeter Terence Blanchard, a major recording artist in his own right, and composer of numerous film scores (many for Spike Lee), brought a fiery element to proceedings; while the twenty-six-year-old drummer Jaylen Petinaud’s phenomenal energy was like a propulsive shot in the arm, as he locked in tightly with Hancock’s grooves. But the real eye-opener was Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke, whose unconventional stylings – jagged, fuzzy, scratchy, roiling with choppy rhythms, odd time signatures – was revelatory.

Hancock paid tribute to his late friend Wayne Shorter with a beautiful take on Shorter’s composition ‘Footprints’, as arranged by Blanchard; then took things up a notch with an extended version of ‘Actual Proof’, from his 1974 album Thrust. What stood out was the way Hancock reimagined this piece, wildly venturing beyond its original melody and bass lines, re-engineering its DNA via a complex amalgam of free-floating piano and driving synths.

Hancock’s mash-up of his hits ‘Hang up your Hangups / Rockit / Spider’ saw him break out his keytar, enabling him to prowl the stage, going head-to-head with Loueke’s funky hooks, the two at one point literally jumping for joy. Hancock closed out the concert with ‘Chameleon’, from his 1973 classic album Head Hunters, a massive crowd-pleaser woven from one of the funkiest bass lines in recorded history, overlain with electronic vamps, horns, and beats.

Despite his eighty-four years of age, Hancock shows few signs of slowing down. What impressed more than anything was the irrepressible energy he brought to his performance, reflecting his obvious joy and love of music-making. Rather than rely on past glories, he remains creatively curious, reconceiving his music with the same futuristic vision he has applied to every stage of his career. The warm standing ovation he received was genuine and heartfelt. 

Antonio Sánchez (photograph by Will Hamilton Coates and courtesy of MIJF)

A very different performance took place the following evening, when drummer Antonio Sánchez took to the stage at the Melbourne Recital Centre, there to perform his Grammy-winning soundtrack for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 Oscar-winning film Birdman. In what was a travesty at the time, Sánchez’s score – almost entirely improvised – was deemed ineligible for an Oscar, due to the presence of snippets of pre-existing music by other composers, including Ravel and John Adams. If anything, it highlighted the Academy’s inability to comprehend the sheer originality of Iñárritu’s conception of how improvised percussion might heighten, and bring into sharp relief, the emotional states of his characters.

Sánchez began with a reminiscence detailing the genesis of the project – his earliest meetings with the director, how they worked closely together to create the music – before taking his place behind his drum kit and laying down a percussive thread as the opening titles rolled. From the outset, Sánchez’s adventurous drumming functioned like the central heartbeat that powered Iñárritu’s film. With its (Raymond) Carveresque themes, blended with magic realism, this story of a man-on-the-edge-of-a-nervous-breakdown revelled in scintillating, breakneck dialogue, shot through with black humour. As the camera pursued characters, via long-tracking shots, down stairways, along corridors, Sánchez’s incessant pulse – visceral and intense – animated each character’s state of unease and confusion, culminating in Michael Keaton’s on-stage breakdown. While I had seen Birdman previously, Sánchez’s live improvised score – worthy of comparison with masterful jazz soundtracks like Duke Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder or Miles Davis’s improvised sketches for Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud – served to enhance and amplify the brilliance of Iñárritu’s film.

Melbourne violinist Xani Kolac’s solo performance in the Primrose Potter Salon proved an unexpected delight. Standing on a small central dais, amid banks of pedals, electronics, and lights, she played in the round, fabricating a quadrophonic sound and light extravaganza. Unveiling a new work, entitled Stamina, developed in conjunction with MIJF, Kolac confessed that it grew out of her experience of Melbourne lockdowns, during which she developed hypochondria. Her work was intended as an exploration of the body – something she became overly attuned to via lockdown anxiety – and the sheer physicality of her performance was a triumph of endurance. Using pedals and live loops, Kolac fashioned dense layers of rhythmic sound, over which she improvised freely. Given the complexity of the arrangement, and the split-second decisions required to keep it all on track, it was a dizzying experience to watch. Her patchwork narrative invariably reflected a range of influences – minimalism, ambient, electronica, improvisation – stitched together with song and stories.

The London jazz scene made its presence felt at this year’s MIJF via several concerts held at 170 Russell Street, a large underground venue tailor-made for DJs and dance-floor parties. Jazz re:freshed, a London-based creative organisation known for championing young Black and female musicians, presented Steam Down, a free-floating collective of London musicians nominally led by saxophonist and vocalist Ahnansé. The band is known for its long-running Wednesday night residency, comprising energetic jams, at their London base. With four vocalists on board, including the incendiary Summer Pearl, and powered by heavy percussion, turntables, and electronics, Steam Down generated high-octane energy from the outset, as they danced, chanted, and cavorted their way across the stage, generating a rave-party atmosphere. Intent on getting bodies moving, their music was a mishmash of styles, blending hip hop, Afro-beat, soul, funk, grime, with occasional forays into free jazz, and Sun Ra-themed Afrofuturism. At times, the performance teetered on shambolic, careening between bustling rhythms and untrammelled chaos, but I suspect that was very much the point. As Jazz re:freshed founder Adam Moses said when he introduced the band: ‘Jazz is what we make it.’ 

Nubya Garcia (photograph by Will Hamilton Coates and courtesy of MIJF)

The following night, London saxophonist Nubya Garcia took to the same stage to present music from her new album Odyssey. Garcia last appeared at MIJF in 2018, a then up-and-coming member of the new London jazz scene alongside Shabaka Hutchings, Theon Cross, Moses Boyd, and others, whose collective music has helped reshape and redefine British jazz. At the time, Garcia had only released a couple of EPs, so this return concert, the first leg of a world tour, on the back of her highly praised second album Odyssey, was a much anticipated event. Odyssey is a sprawling, ambitious affair, blending her spiritual saxophone with vocals and orchestral arrangements.

For her Melbourne concert, Garcia appeared with her quartet, necessitating a recasting of the album’s ambitious sound (though Lyle Barton’s electric keys and synths did manage to convey something of the album’s orchestral arrangements). What soon became apparent was how adaptable these pieces were to re-interpretation, powered by Garcia’s big-sounding tenor, which crested wave-like through the space, building in intensity. Drummer Sam Jones provided metronomic beats, incorporating drum and bass influences, while Barton’s electric piano added layers of rich colouration. On tracks such as ‘Odyssey’ and ‘The Seer’, Garcia delved into modal and spiritual jazz, her saxophone questing and searching, engaged in epic-storytelling. The closer, ‘Triumphance’, was forged from dub bass lines and spoken word, its message powerful and uplifting. It was a bravura performance, sonically dense and rhythmically complex, testifying to Garcia’s phenomenal growth as an artist in just a few short years.

The MIJF’s Club Sessions series, held at Jazzlab, provided a more intimate space for acoustic jazz, while at the same time encouraging experimental and exploratory approaches, an essential part of the music’s lifeblood. On opening night, Barlines & Beyond played to a sold-out crowd, demonstrating their commitment to fusing Eastern and Western improvisation. The quartet, comprising Indian classical slide guitarist Pandit Debashish Chakraborty, saxophonist Rob Burke, tabla player Sam Evans, and guitarist Stephen Magnusson, presented a new cycle of compositions, crafted from close listening and reciprocity. Burke’s gruff, burly tenor often shouldered the melodic role, while the twin guitars – manifesting differing cultural approaches and techniques – trotted out complex, mesmeric hooks, gambolling delicately over Evans’s tabla. There was a raw beauty to this music, full of reflective and gentle moods, meditative and drone-like, patterned from the intersection of traditional Indian music and Western jazz.

Following Barlines & Beyond, trumpeter Peter Knight and Korean-born vocalist Sunny Kim reconvened their long-running, albeit sporadic, musical collaboration Bright Splinters, joined by guitarist Theo Carbo and drummer Dylan van der Schyff. Emphasising an electro-acoustic approach, blending electronics and looped effects with trumpet and rhythmic percussion, it set the scene for Kim’s haunting vocals, which soared over this music, ghostly and ethereal. Eschewing melody, the quartet focused on finely grained textures – routinely furnished by guitarist Carbo, whose startlingly original approach is a marvel – as they spun free-form storylines out of intuitive interplay. The resulting music – played without a net – was chockful of surprise and wonder.

Rashaan Carter and Brandee Younger (photograph by @Duncographic and courtesy of MIJF)

New York Harpist Brandee Younger proved a break-out hit of this year’s MIJF, playing four sold-out concerts at the Jazzlab with her trio. While harp is far from a traditional instrument in jazz, it has been subject to recent revaluation via the re-discovery of 1960s recordings by Dorothy Ashby, and the long-overdue reappraisal of Alice Coltrane’s outstanding legacy of spiritual jazz. Younger paid tribute to both artists, performing an evening of Coltrane’s music, as well as an evening of her own compositions, many drawn from the recent album Brand New Life, including several homages to Ashby. From the outset, Younger’s harp playing was mesmerising and dream-like, her spiralling waves of sound fuelled by Allan Mednard’s driving percussion and Rashaan Carter’s busy electric bass lines. Standout pieces included her new composition ‘Gadabout Season’, the Dorothy Ashby-penned ‘You’re a Girl for One Man Only’, Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Want You’, and a magnificent reading of Stevie Wonder’s ‘If It’s Magic’, a song that originally featured Ashby’s harp. With her luminous, delicate, and trance-inducing sound – paired with a willingness to honour her forebears – Younger has single-handedly reinvigorated the role of harp in jazz.

Bass player and singer Esperanza Spalding closed the festival with her concert at Hamer Hall. For the past decade, she has shown herself to be an original and eclectic figure, merging jazz with soul, R&B, Latin, funk, art music, and pop. In 2011, she became the first jazz musician to win a Grammy Award for Best New Artist, pushing aside the likes of Drake and Florence & the Machine, no small feat. She has since gone on to win a swag more, as well as undertake critically acclaimed collaborations with Wayne Shorter, Fred Hersch, and legendary Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento.

Spalding performed with her trio, comprising guitarist Matthew Stevens and drummer Eric Doob, accompanied by dancers Kaylin Horgan and Tashae Udo, whose gyrating figures roamed freely throughout the space, adding a strong visual and performative element. Spalding largely confined herself to acoustic and electric bass, occasionally switching to piano, playing music that was low key and minimal (though capable of building a solid head of steam when called for), laying down a flexible base for her singing, which veered wildly between soul, pop, and art song, often within the same verse. Stevens’s guitar was integral to this music, weaving intricate patterns and hooks, literally dancing across Spalding’s bass lines; while drummer Doob appeared to conjure space from his gentle percussive insertions.

Spalding highlighted music from her 2019 album Twelve Little Spells, a song-cycle exploring parts of the body, as she intoned and sang about spines, hips, and stride grease. Rather than rely on verse/chorus arrangements, Spalding’s complex (and often humorous) lyrics were shoe-horned into ever-shuffling time signatures, her off-kilter music seemingly animating the lyrical content. She used her own body to express her pet themes, at one point joining the dancers for an extended instrumental interlude, revelling in music’s fundamental link to the body.

There was nothing predictable about Spalding’s performance, it unfolded organically in constantly surprising ways, forming a mysterious and thematic whole that was more than the sum of its parts. Even her on-stage patter seemed in character, providing a conceptual link throughout, a narrative thread that fused song with everyday wisdom, musings on technology, family, and love. Ending with a sudden infusion of light, courtesy of an old-fashioned 1970s mirror-ball, Spalding sat at her piano, gently intoning her lyric ‘Black Gold’, a deeply resonant paean to her ancestors. Spalding’s concert – with its stream-of-consciousness and conceptual undertow (it is no surprise that she has expressed an interest in working with Björk) – proved a strange and disconcerting experience, the manifestation of a major artist flexing body and mind.

While there was no discernible thread to this year’s MIJF, the program brandished a straight-up confidence and pride in serving up the best that contemporary jazz has to offer. For ten days, Melbourne played host to a raft of Grammy winners, and others, who joined forces to deliver a lesson on where jazz is at, and where it is headed. If the number of sold-out performances is any indication, there is a ready appetite for this music. Certainly, the program leaned heavily toward female acts, but this only serves to reflect the fact that international artists such as Esperanza Spalding, Nubya Garcia, Brandee Younger, Jazzmeia Horn – or local musicians like Audrey Powne or Bumpy – are injecting new styles, ideas, and influences into this music, helping to shape its future. Along the way, we were treated to the best of the UK jazz scene; alongside challenging performances by experimental artists such as Kira Kira and Bright Splinters. We were projected back in time to re-evaluate George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, as it turns one hundred; and dazzled by the rhythmic exuberance of Chick Corea’s ‘Spain’, re-imagined for orchestra (both performances enhanced by the brilliant playing of Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone). There were second line street parades through the city, historical jazz films projected at Federation Square, and free lunchtime concerts – much more than was humanly possible to absorb. Not least, the 2024 MIJF provided what may be a last opportunity to hear from one of jazz’s greatest living legends, Herbie Hancock, whose towering performance set the tone. You would be hard pressed to argue for more.

The Melbourne International Jazz Festival ran from 18 to 27 October 2024.