Australian Art Orchestra
Gig

All That Jazz

Review of Into The Fire

It was the AAO's performance on the second day with the big band sound and a very contemporary style that was not only scintillating but also had a breath of fresh air about it. As Grabowsky puts it, "It's a completely different concept. It is a contemporary music ensemble not just a jazz group. We don't just play jazz. It has aspects of Avant Garde but, sometimes we do play Duke Ellington and things like that, but actually it is a vehicle for composers to write extended works for improvising musicians. It will be difficult to predict what it will be like in ten years time. At the moment it is largely jazz-tied instruments like saxophones and trumpets".

"I would like to think that in the the near future there will be lots of other musicians who play other instruments who can improvise equally well and the AAO may have a completely different sound." This sound was very evident in the piece entitled Vasantha Pravaham composed by mridangam player Karaikudi R. Mani. Based on two South Indian ragas and arranged by his disciple and trombone player Adrian Sherriff. The piece was about the finest piece of fusion involving Indian music and rhythms and a big band sound.

The effect was very stunning as the horn section provided a dimension of grandeur to the Indian passages which perhaps no other Indo-jazz fusion group has ever achieved. Mani on mridangam together with T.V. Vasan on ghatam provided an exciting interplay of rhythms in their solo sections.

- The Indian Express, Bombay 31 October 1996

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