Music

To say that Steven Osborne is one of the more uncompromisingly personal artists out there sounds like the kind of praise that is obligatorily handed to any performer who truly belongs to the top tier. But in the case of this Scottish pianist, his playing can be so individual that one has to enquire into the distinctiveness of his art in order to fully appreciate it.

When Wynton Marsalis’s début album appeared on CBS Records in 1982, with its moody, pensive black and white cover portrait of the then twenty-year-old trumpeter, few could have predicted where his career was headed. Sure, he had performed Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto with the New Orleans Philharmonic at fourteen, and further honed his craft in the trumpet chair of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

A century ago, as Australia’s nascent capital planned its performing-arts future, it opted for a ‘commodious’ assembly hall, serving conference and recreational purposes, and doubling as a municipal theatre. Completed in 1928, Albert Hall was to be the ‘centre from which will radiate all those aspirations that are truly national’, as then Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce pompously intoned at its opening. Since then, the Hall’s record has been less illustrious, often housing carpet or shoe sales, community fairs or eisteddfods. With its peeling ceiling, drooping curtains, winter draughts, and cramped, overly elevated stage, it has proven a challenge to several generations of concert entrepreneurs.

At last, ‘The Sydney’ is back. Not since 2016 has the city given a live welcome to one of its most distinctive artistic events: the Sydney International Piano Competition. After frustrating years of virtual activity, planning insecurity, and structural rethinking, Piano-Plus (Piano+) has emerged as the umbrella body for presenting a wide range of competition, festival, touring, and educational activities.

How might Australian history be characterised in song? Described as 150 years of alternative Australian voices, Robyn Archer’s An Australian Songbook is a very personal song selection that convincingly shows how song is the lifeblood of a healthy society, and a mirror to it.

As much as it is a continual delight to hear the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) giving unfailingly wonderful performances in its national touring programs, one is often left yearning to know more about this ensemble’s inner workings and how it creates its magic. For in its artistic director, Richard Tognetti, one might say there is indeed something of the magician, evident both in his own uniquely arresting violin playing and in the way he elicits quite startling results from his fellow musicians.

It is hard to believe that an organisation founded forty years ago could still be flourishing today under the helm of its original founder. When current creative director Martin Jackson, in 1982, conceived the idea of a co-operative aimed at fostering the development of jazz and improvised music in Melbourne, I doubt he could have foreseen where it might lead. But here we are, four decades on, part of a full house at the Melbourne Recital Centre, here to celebrate the numerous achievements of the Melbourne Jazz Co-operative (MJC).