This room has three sub-rooms, Jazz and Urban, Covers and Others. It offers a feast of music, all of which is engaging. In the Jazz and Urban room, you will experience performances of the highest quality. Staff include: our celebrated Lecturer in Performance, Waldo Garrido with his exquisitely performed, moving rendition of a Chileote song, El Cielito; David Cashman with his original jazz number, Morning prayer; and Andy Milne’s The Passage with its intriguing additive rhythms performed by the Illusions of Grandeur. The undergraduate students here are among our best and they include: The Groove Operators with an R&B Medley; the Funk Ensemble, Master Blaster; and duo, Pam Withnall and Matt Dennett with Leonardo. The Covers’ room presents a varied playlist by undergraduate students and includes: Jessica Said and Joel Sandblom, Little Talks; James Rees, Oxygene 14-10; the band, Amnesia with Peace Sign; Ishi Mahadurage, Surrender; Steve Cox and Lisa Plummer, Best Part; and Steve Cox, Perfect. The third room, Others, includes: a playful improvisation exploring the pandemic by Associate Professor Sally Macarthur, who layers three organ improvisations, one on top of the other; an improvisation exploring the organ’s full resources by casual staff member, Brett McKern; and two classical works beautifully performed by accordion player, Danilo Garovic.
Jazz and Urban
Waldo Garrido
David Cashman
Right now, amidst the Coronavirus epidemic, opportunities to perform are less available. It’s a rough time to be a musician. I work academically with Dr Kristina Kelman, writing on Indian popular music; but we’re both jazz musicians. We put together a band of talented musicians and recorded an old song of mine that Kristina had written lyrics to. We hope you like it.
The Groove Operators
WSU Funk ensemble
Pam Withnall and Matt Dennett
Leonardo is a piece inspired by the music of Kenny Garrett and dedicated to my brother Len. The song is a vehicle for Jazz improvisation and is handled sensitively by the wonderful Jazz pianist Matthew Dennett. The collaboration between Matthew and I has been one of the highlights of learning at Western Sydney.
Illusions of Grandeur (Andy Milne)
The Passage is part of a suite “telling” of a mysterious sea voyage. This passage is between two rough seas via a narrow but calm strait. The music uses shifting time signatures: 13/8, 12/8, 3/4, 11/8, with a metrical modulation into the coda. The musical scale is the double harmonic, the only 7-tone scale in that is perfectly balanced; that is, if the pitches in this scale are represented as weights on a circle, their centre of gravity is at the centre of the circle (Milne et al. 2015; Milne, Bulger, Herff 2017).
Covers
Jessica Said, Joel Sandblom
James Rees
A tribute to electronic music pioneer Jean Michel Jarre, featuring a live rendition of Oxygene Parts 14 & 10 utilizing an extensive modular synthesizer setup. James Rees is music technologist and synth obsessive from the Blue Mountains.
Amnesia
Ishi Mahadurage
Steve Cox and Lisa Plummer
Steve Cox
Others
Sally Macarthur
Inspired by the current world-wide pandemic, the piece takes a light-hearted approach, through a series of improvisations that are then layered, one upon another, at the havoc reaped upon the world by a virus. Punning on the title, the improvisation begins with a quiet folkish tune before breaking into general confusion and noisy disorder. It concludes with a peal of bells that join the prevailing cacophony.
Brett Mckern
Danilo Garovic