Define your genre in 5 words or less:
Reflective and thought provoking goodness.
When’s the gig and with who?
We’ve just launched our debut album ‘After All’ at Bennetts Lane Jazz Club and now have some upcoming gigs, firstly on Monday September 24th at Café 303 in Northcote as part of the Darebin Music Festival, and then on Wednesday October 31st and Wednesday November 7th at Bennetts Lane Jazz Club. My quartet is made up of myself on saxophone, along with three really beautiful musicians who I met whilst studying music at Monash University: Dan Sheehan on piano, Christian Meyer on guitar and James Gilligan on electric bass.
What inspires or has influenced your music the most?
It sounds obvious and maybe even a bit clichéd, but life experiences have influenced my music more than anything. Music doesn’t make sense unless the person playing it has lived, and it wasn’t until I actually experienced some things that my music and my playing started to have meaning. Legendary saxophonist Art Pepper led an incredibly troubled life full of rejection, drugs, violence and incarceration, and yet he was one of the most beautiful musicians to ever play. I doubt he would have sounded any good if he hadn’t have gone through that!
When, and why did you start writing music?
I started when I was about 16 – I never wrote anything down, I just wanted to write music that sounded the way I felt at the time. That’s still how I write music, but I write things down now! I think it’s the most organic approach, and the one that allows people to relate more closely to what they’re hearing. There’s a lot to be said for simplicity, particularly in Jazz or any style of music that is based in improvisation.
What makes a good musician?
In my experience, good musicians are always intelligent, articulate, interesting, humble people, who have the emotional and intellectual capacity to reflect on their own experiences and understand what they mean to them. Basically, the characteristics that make a good person also make a good musician.
What’s your favourite song, and why?
‘Case of You’ by Joni Mitchell, for all the reasons I’ve described above.
