Sagacious Arts, like everyone else in Australia who wants to avoid a fine, knows how you’ll be feeling at about 8pm on Saturday, August 21: pensive.
You will have just cast your vote in one of the most disenheartening elections ever (let’s just hope it’s not true that people get the leaders they deserve). You’ll be wondering why you bothered: It’ll just be more of the same for another few years, whoever wins. But maybe you’ll feel a bit relieved that the campaigning is over and it might be a week or two before one of our political leaders insults your intelligence again.
You’ll be ambivalent at best and NOTHING will chase away those Dud Election Blues like the Sagacious Arts Orchestra. Let us put your mind through the gentle cycle and wash away those doubts for a while.

Ambient-electro-jazz and visuals.

Eastside Arts, 395 Oxford St Paddington

$15

Dear Sydney,

Sagacious Arts’ big return gig for 2010 is a Funky Intervention. It’s time for some funk love.

We at Sagacious Arts love you and we would like you to have some live funk played by live funk musicians. You can never have enough funk in your life and more of it will only make you feel more better.

We present, for a night of funk love and interventionary medicine, the notorious:

Jungle Chicken

+ special guests:
John Hardaker,
Wallace Kuntbrique III

Where: Eastside Arts, 395 Oxford St, Paddington.
When: Saturday, July 31, 8pm
Cost: A measly $15

for more info, contact Zarina Varley: zaz@zazmusic.com.au

Almost a year of workshopping launches the Kim Lawson Trio into their debut album, “Alive And Kicking”. The album delivers a set of meticulous compositions. Each piece has its own identity, tightly framed and concise yet with space built-in for improvisation and the expression of each member of the trio. Although drawing from jazz, classical, funk and various other sources, the trio succeeds completely in having its own sound.

‘The first time I heard Kim I was playing with him at an impromptu jam at someone’s house in early 2007. Immediately dug his natural musicality, great time feel, hip melodic ideas, soulful sound and maybe most importantly – a sense of when to flex his chops and when not to.” – Steve Hunter

—

Saxophonist Kim Lawson, originally from Cairns, is quickly establishing a reputation for his tenacious and inventive improvising and huge sound.

Kim Lawson: Sax; Steve Hunter: Bass; James Hauptmann: Drums.

John Hardaker’s arrangements of Xmas carols: scintillating, square-jawed, mclaughlinesque and fonky.

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Thank you to everyone who supported us in 2009. We had a year in the 95th percentile and a big, hippy “far out” to all involved in our little music caper.

The Petersham Town Hall was awesome but has slipped slowly from our fingers and is now drifting off into the sunset, forever just beyond our reach.

So we’re looking for a new home. Once we get that sorted we’ll be back in action. We’ve already got some great music potentially lined up; hopefully good things will occur.

Until then, we’ll make a special effort to do what we’ve never ever done before and keep this website up-to-date.

Cheers,

The Committee

Zoe and the Buttercups

Zoe Hauptmann has made a huge impact on the Sydney scene since moving here in 2002 and now her Butterband is making its mark too. Zoe and the Buttercups blend a dynamic, unique and danceable sound that brings
the hoe-down into the 21st Century.

Exploring original music they call count-rockery jazz, they breath the influences of Jerry Reed, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Their music is a “weird and wonderful blend of jazz, bluegrass and rock that will by turns elicit laughs, cries of ”Yee-ha!” and cool nods of intellectual approval - John Shand

The John Hardaker Direction

For the Sagacious Arts Christmas show, John has arranged six Yuletide favourites for an ensemble comprising Crystal Moloney - flute, Greg Levine - tenor, Adam Lean - trombone, Nigel Williams - 5 string bass, John H - guitar and Dom O’leary - cocktail drums. He has made a list and he has checked it twice - nice!

October: this month Sagacious Arts celebrates REVOLUTIONS. Turn around, overthrow, radical pervasive change. Short term, rapid, long and slow - with two of Sydney’s finest avant garde music acts:

Friday, October 23 @ Petersham Town Hall

3OFMILLIONS

Adrian Klumpes, Abel Cross, Finn Ryan

+

Paul Cutlan/Andrew Robson: Simpatico

doors open at 7:30pm
tickets $10

Revolutions get a bad wrap in society now - consumerism has taken hold and we don’t like the Marxist connotations - CIA-backed military coups - violence - corruption.

But we’re looking at the upside. Most of what people like in the world today came from revolutions: the French Revolution; the Industrial Revolution; the OCTOBER Revolution; the Information Technology Revolution. And this music is part of a revolutionary continuum. Forget the music press telling you experimentation belongs in the 60s. Bach Beethoven Stravinsky Ellington Parker Varese Coleman Coltrane Davis etc. here and now Petersham Town Hall 23 Oct 2009.

3ofmillions

This trio investigate all reaches of improvisation, staying true to the spontanaeity and experimentalism laid down in their precursors of blues, jazz, electro-acoustics, noise and industrial rock. The rawest of emotions are unleashed and transformed into sound.

Reviews for their album, Immediate (space dairy, December 2008):
“3ofmillions invigorates with its fearless attack, and embodies the genre-advancing spirit that was once standard practice in jazz” - textura

“In 3ofmillions, there’s no looking back at the past, no second-guessing the future. There’s only now” - mess and noise

“3ofmillions speak on their own terms and with their own language” - cyclic defrost

Cutlan/Robson Simpatico

Reed players Andrew Robson and Paul Cutlan have played together in various bands since the mid-nineties. When they come together to improvise, you are guaranteed to hear music filled with friendship, humour, trust and adventure. The duo they form is known as Simpatico, and their self-titled debut CD, available from www.lamplightrecords.com, has received wide critical acclaim:

“The title says it all. The combination of Andrew Robson on alto saxophone with Paul Cutlan on E flat clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor sax is immediately unusual and totally captivating… the result is full of exquisite counterpoint and intricate conversation right from the first track… A thoroughly engaging dialogue.” Leon Gettler, The Age

” Texturally, it is as abundant as a rainforest” John Shand, The Sydney Morning Herald

“Foreshadowing, foxing and reaching for the unknown without compromising on melody” Peter Wockner, Limelight Magazine

“…swinging atonal, Balkan Neoclassical impressionism of the blues of Central Asia might describe just a few of its moments… intelligent and sensitive interplay” John Napier, Music Forum

“…almost like Dolphy playing against himself” Andrey Henkin, All about Jazz.com

“…their music is always heartfelt and genuine, and never relies on cliché” Phillip McNally, Cadence Magazine

Friday, September 18

Sagacious Arts presents:

Jo Fabro and the Grown Ups

—

Jo Fabro

“Contemporary jazz voice with a funky soul edge” – James Muller.

Aaron Flower

2007 Wangaratta Jazz Festival Guitarist of the year Competition.

Steve Hunter

Performed-recorded with Australia’s finest musicians and Billy Cobham , Chick Corea , Bobby Previte & others.

Tim Firth

is one of the most in-demand drummers in Sydney.

—

@ Petersham Town Hall

107 Crystal St, Petersham

Doors open at 7:30pm.

$10

As if mindful of Miles Davis’s warning to one of his ’70’s sidemen on the Big Fun sessions - “If I catch you playin’ any of that jazz shit, you’re fired!” - guitarist John Hardaker began the event with Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. The event was Kind of Kind of Blue, an evening wrapped around Miles Davis in general and the iconic Kind of Blue album in particular.

The venue was the beautiful and slightly creepy Petersham Town Hall and the Hendrix ballad - a duet with flautist Crystal Moloney - rang strange and exotic among its art deco curlicues. Miles had admired Hendrix and pushed his groups of the 70’s further and further into harder funk-rock, so the inclusion of Little Wing seemed to signal that this evening’s performance was to be more about Miles’ attitude than his notes.

Hardaker grew the band with each new tune. The flute/guitar duet of Little Wing was followed by a quartet reading of Wayne Shorter(a critical Miles alumni)’s Footprints and a quintet version of Yuseff Lateef’s Nubian Lady, joined here by Virgil Reality on trumpet. Next up, the stage was filled with a little big band - including two percussionists - which dug into a porn-funk version of Maiysha from the 70’s album Get Up With It, featuring a nimble alto solo from Matt Radzyner. Tutu from the 80’s recast the original synth statement as a horn line - taken out of its context it reminded us that its all blues anyway. Rob Woodward’s soprano solo fed middle-eastern lines into John Hardaker’s chattering blues solo.

With Hardaker’s announcement “we will now play the national anthem…”, bass player Oliver Simpson began the ominous riff to Bitches Brew. The riff grew into a dissonant brass sludge which sharpened suddenly into the Its About That Time riff under Greg Levine’s skronkin’ tenor solo. The whole piece died away during Oliver Simpson’s bass segue only to begin its jagged climb again. This time the riff it broke on was Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love as played by 9 brass and fuzz guitar. Somewhere, maybe Miles smiled.

A short intermission and it was Kind of Blue as interpreted by the John Hardaker Direction. Hardaker took each piece from the album and reworked it for his band. He left a lot of it alone - not out of reverence so much as out of artistic contrition: how can a perfect expression be perfected? - and yet it sounded nothing like the original.

So What was a funky strut. more blue and red neon than the inky indigo of Miles’ 1959 original. A bright chase chorus - flute/trumpet/alto/trombone - was bookended by Hardaker’s Hendrix semi-quotations (a shred of Jimi’s Who Knows in there) and Oliver Simpson’s bass meditations. Freddie Freeloader chilled on a reggae beat with a sly trombone solo from Adam Lean, before thudding into a raw boogie worthy of ZZ Top for the solos. Was Miles, somewhere, still smiling?

Blue in Green seemed an impossible task - how could such a translucent wisp of mood as the original, all breath and feints, work in this brassy, tough context? The band took a bluesier, more definite tack; the Miles-Bill Evans melody held it all together like sinew and let it be lush. After a punched out quote from Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage as a bridge, the arrangement ebbed for solos from Sarah Neill on trumpet and Justin Buckingham on alto. All Blues seemed the least altered - the feel was true to the swinging 6/8 original - the band just enlarged on key phrases here and there. It worked because it did the best thing you can do with the blues - leave it alone. The groove formed a great lurching bed for solos from Justin Buckingham, Rob Woodward (on tenor) and John Hardaker.

After member introductions, the band dispersed and walked off stage, leaving John Hardaker and Virgil Reality alone together to finish the night with Flamenco Sketches. This was the quietest piece of the night and the room stilled under its mood. The twinned flutes of Crystal Moloney and Rob Woodward countered the trumpet in the “spanish” section of Miles’ aching melody, rising together to play a double solo before the trumpets return. In a sense, this was the most successful piece of the evening, if one takes Kind of Blue’s overriding achievement as mood - as shrinking the universe down for a few minutes to fit a trumpet bell.

Jazz, blues, rock, country, funk - they all had a run tonight. They all had a run because they were free to - because the music and attitude of Miles Davis said it was ok. Jazz as a significant form of music has always shrivelled if inbred for too long. Miles Davis invigorated it again and again in his time. And it was that attitude that the John Hardaker Direction - a band peopled with players too young to ever have known jazz as a music devoid of rock and funk - strutted out across the stage tonight. And Miles smiled.

© 2009 baba rumraisin

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Sagacious Arts presents:

Fringe Music Fridays Friday August 28
Kind Of Kind Of Blue featuring the John Hardaker Direction and Big Bad World

Doors at 7:30pm,
live music from 8:30pm

Tickets at the GFC busting price of $10
appropriate refreshments available

Following the success of its first two months, Sagacious Arts is back for its third installment and concept evening, this time featuring the John Hardaker Direction’s ‘Kind Of Kind Of Blue’ project on August 28 at Petersham Town Hall.

Released August 17, 1959, Miles Davis’s quadruple-platinum Kind of Blue is the greatest jazz album ever made (comments welcome below for those wishing to argue). As well as a cultural and commercial triumph, the innovations and attitude of the music - and of Miles Davis’s entire subsequent career - have proved inspiring to generations of musicians and music fans.

Taking the work of Miles Davis in general - and Kind of Blue (greatest album ever made) in particular - as inspiration, the John Hardaker Direction presents Kind of Kind of Blue.

Jazz-blues guitarist John Hardaker and his band - a honkin’ 14 pieces - will present their unique take on every track on the Kind of Blue album. So What, Freddie Freeloader and Flamenco Sketches are given funked-up, reggae and even country treatments - purists wince, Miles Smiles.

As well as the entire album interpreted, there will be other Miles-flavoured delights on the night. This is the third Kind of Kind of Blue that the JHD have done, and it’s guaranteed to be an electrifying experience.

Stay tuned for next month - September 18, featuring
Jo Fabro and the Grown Ups.

Media Enquiries: Zaz Music
Zarina Varley – 0402 431 733 zaz@zazmusic.com.au