You mentioned you are from Australia but had moved to New York and lived there for 6 years. What brought you to New York? School?
New York was the place to be for any real jazz musician, something you had to do. My dad had moved to the states a few years before me which facilitated everything. He had come over to work in Colorado for/with John Denver on a big environmental gig called Windstar. So he helped me to get my green card. A handful of Sydney musicians had done time in the big apple and greatly inspired me to get over. You could sort of hear it in their sound. After getting thrown out of music school, it seemed like the right place to be. I was greatly inspired at the time by the music of Steve Coleman and Gary Thomas, both exponents of a certain brainy and powerful East Coast sound. In Sydney, the scene had become very polarized between stuffy old bebop nazis, and airy fairy nonsense, and I was craving something more truthful. As Australian artists, we were far more concerned with staking out a career than being part of something bigger.
I believe you said you were living in Austin and are a student at UT. What are you studying? Music?
I am en route to completing a music degree, but opportunity relentlessly conspires against this. Every time I go to sign up for semester, I get a call for some kind of tour which is always too fun to turn down. I have a spotty educational career. I was accepted for a full scholarship in my first year back in Sydney, but the following year thrown out for reasons that even now have not been disclosed to me. UT School of Music kindly offered me the full ride, but first I must complete the non-music stuff at ACC, it's much cheaper. The story I sent you was right out of a composition class I took last summer there. I eventually intend to complete a Doctorate in Music. Mostly to be around the facilities; I love writing for and conducting orchestra. It's super. And ultimately I would love to write and perform my own saxophone concerti for full orchestra.
You were performing with a jazz group at the Luminaria event. Do you have the names of the other musicians? How did you become involved in this event?
I was called by bassist Eric Revis, an old cohort from NYC. Eric is a very special musician; he has an unforgettable way of soloing. He gets very involved in each note and dances and sings to an imaginary listener about 4 feet in front of him. It's intense and makes you want to never again throw away a note. We hadn't played together in years, so it was really nice to catch up. We had played in similar circles up there back in the day, which some of the other musicians on the gig had been part of — namely our drummer Dana Murray and the other tenor saxophonist (there were 2 of us) Dave Jensen. William Minnifield was on piano; a very talented guy who lives in Austin. Needless to say, these guys are all bad motherfu#$ers and it was an honour to play with them.
Are you classically trained? (Classical sax...is that an oxymoron!? ;-)
Saxophone has been so brutalized over the years. Honking, squealing, and Kenny G have given it the reputation of the retarded bastard, mongoloid whore-child, forever shunned from the hallowed concert halls, perhaps rightly so. But what people don't realize is that, in the right mouth, the tenor is truly the most beautiful/powerful/noble/ instrument of all. I was classically trained on violin and piano, but I am completely self-taught on sax. I could never find a teacher who would take me. I tried recently at UT, where the professor took one listen and said "It's clear you don't know the first thing about playing saxophone." But I have recently had a shift toward classical tone.
When did you first become interested in jazz and music?
My first memory is when I was about 5 and my mum had bought me a walkman and I heard this Bach piano sonata, and was deeply stirred. At that time, our neighbor who played harp for the Sydney Youth Orchestra would practice in her upstairs bedroom at nights while I was going to sleep; and I was entirely enchanted, for years. Jazz eventually won me with its freedom. Aesthetically, I was far more taken with symphonic music (Who can resist Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, or Wagner?) and rock music (Duran Duran at the time) rather than the simple barebones of jazz. My dad had played jazz trumpet in his youth and tried to turn me on to it, but it sounded like ka ka to my young ears. But one day I was listening to Charlie Parker and I fell in love. From there it went through all the greats, but what really got me was the immense freedom jazz endows its architects. As a child I was a great fan of Lego. Jazz allowed me to continue that compulsion to imagine and create, working with space. There is nothing more satisfying to me than creating something spontaneously and irrevocably beautiful on the spot with a team of artists. The freedom to explore sound/space with people you trust; it's like flying.
The group I am working on right now will allow me to build the sounds that I loved from classical music, ethnic (forgive this term, I know of no other) music, and rock; it won't be limited to just the sound of jazz, but it will enjoy the same improvisatory freedom.
Did you gain great insight in New York from performing with other musicians? What was that like?
I made many great friends while I was there, fellow performers. These guys were older than I, far more experienced, real men, kind of warriors. I learned many wonderful things from these guys, the tricks of the trade, so to speak. These were the things that I could never have learned in school. Subtle things: how to react on the bandstand, how to handle difficult musicians, how to play the political game. But slowly I found myself drifting away from all these people. I felt most of these guys wanted nothing more than to perpetuate tradition. Strangely, I wanted much more: to cling steadfastly to my ideals, to pursue the music of my dreams, to fly free from the shackles of traditional, even modern jazz, but with beauty and structure that was missing in the avant-garde scene. I was very alone in this, and couldn't really relate to anyone about it. But then a truly strange thing happened. I used to go listen to Kurt Rosenwinkel every Tuesday night at Smalls for years. He quickly became my hero, relentlessly pursuing his ideals. Here was a guy who had studied every last inch of jazz tradition, but in the end had chosen his own route. He was far beyond my league, but I was happy to be able to go hear him. After leaving NY, quitting jazz for a couple of years to pursue a rock band that I had created, I got a call to go on tour with Kurt in Australia for 2 weeks. Can you imagine? Getting to go on tour with your all-time hero? Very odd, wonderful, right out of the blue. Through an Australian piano player, Barney McAll, who had been playing recently with Kurt, and had known me back in the day. Since then, Kurt and I have planned to make my first jazz record this coming Sept. in NYC. This will be beyond what I could ever have hoped for in the grueling political underworld I had left behind. I guess I was saved by fate or something. Am I being too dramatic?
Do you play anything besides the sax?
I am a fairly decent pianist, guitarist, clarinetist, flutist, and vocalist. In 2001 I quit everything to live out my dream of being a rock star. I created a band called the Handsome Charlies. We got signed to a local Austin label called I Eat Records and toured all over the Midwest. We even made a video that made it to MTV. It was a blast, but it grew old quickly. This phase helped me to value the freedom that jazz gives you. There isn't much freedom in the rock world; you have to do the same shit every night.
Last summer I considered trying out for UT on classical piano and got some Rachmaninoff together, with a coach, but then that tour came up. In 1998, me and a buddy created the Williamsburg Chamber Orchestra in NYC; we basically rounded up as many classical folk as possible and started throwing concerts in abandoned buildings in Williamsburg. This was a blast, writing our own material (often hours before the concert) and then conducting them. I studied conducting seriously at Columbia University for a year, and composition at Juilliard. Now I work part time for a TV commercial market here in Austin; they call me in for orchestra/conducting stuff and horn section arrangement stuff. I'll still do the odd cocktail piano gig, if you pay me enough. I also write short stories; I have several. And I paint; awfully. I guess what you could say is I am one confused dude!
Do you hope to stay in Austin after graduation or do you have plans to travel or move elsewhere?
I have marvelous dreams of rolling around Europe, through misty Polish train stations, sipping macchiato with a mistress in San Remo, romping from one German castle to the next, finally settling down in some flower-flecked Swiss mountain meadow with a couple of goats, perhaps. But all this aside, my aspirations right now are all musical; and I feel now I am closer than ever.
