WHAT THE CRITICS SAID ABOUT THE 2008 FESTIVAL
The Australian
"It's raining riffs at Wangaratta"
November 04, 2008
Click here for the full article
TWO years ago, heavy rain inundated the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and volunteers had to use buckets to tip knee-deep water out of the blues marquee. Now a new, larger blues venue with open sides has been built on the bank of the Ovens river, bringing the number of festival venues to seven, plus the free sound stage in the main street.
Australia's foremost jazz festival is in its 19th year. And while overcast, the festival's opening day was warm, with no sign of rain. Once again the small Victorian town had geared up to host about 30,000 visitors and the festival's budget had been expanded to $800,000. Local businesses moved into festival mode with decorations and special offers, and it seems everyone throws their support behind the town's famous event, which used 150 volunteers.
The Age
Jessica Nicholas
5/11/08
"From an artistic point of view, the Wangaratta Jazz Festival is in robust health. The 2008 program assembled by artistic director Adrian Jackson reflected the startling breadth and depth of this country's talent.......
"US saxophonist David Murray provided some of the most explosively exciting music in the event's 19-year history.
But the most fervent festival buzz this year was reserved for the quartet co-led by guitarist John Scofield and saxophonist Joe Lovano. These two jazz giants revelled in each other's company with joyful energy, accompanied by a powerful and deeply grooving rhythm section (Matt Penman on bass and Matt Wilson on drums).......
In a festival coup, both artists also appeared in concerts led by Australian musicians. Lovano joined Paul Grabowsky for an intense quintet set, while Scofield joined guitarist James Muller in an exhilarating curtain-closer for the marquee."
The Australian
John McBeath
4/11/08
"This year's program was again a varied selection of top overseas and Australian names across different genres: classic jazz, blues, mainstream and contemporary. Groups ranged in size from the solo pianos of Mike Nock and Andrea Keller to a 16-piece big band led by US pianist-arranger Jim McNeely, plus several vocalists.
A festival highlight was David Murray's much-anticipated Black Saint Quartet and they delivered a high-energy performance in gigajoules....The audience responded with a standing ovation. US headliners the John Scofield-Joe Lovano quartet received a standing ovation for their highly professional collaborations of guitar and tenor sax, playing a varied program that included funky jazz-rock, ballads, original compositions and jazz standards.
Part of the brilliance of festival artistic director Adrian Jackson's programming is combining musicians in unaccustomed contexts. This year featured American saxophonist Joe Lovano with Grabowsky's band, playing tunes from their CD Tales of Time and Space....Perhaps the most eagerly awaited performance was the pairing of Scofield with the trio of Sydney-based guitarist James Muller. It was a case of the disciple joining the guru.... the two guitars fitted together as one instrument in unison passages, then exchanged solos that shot into a guitar euphoria. One would take the other's idea and continue with the sequence, extending or rephrasing it and stoking the excitement to a point of glorious eruption."
Sydney Morning Herald
John Shand
5/11/08
"When festival artistic directors fulfil both halves of their job description, they metamorphose from curator to creator. Rather than just importing headline acts, for instance, they can boldly unite artists who may not otherwise collaborate, and in this regard Adrian Jackson, Wangaratta's artistic director, pulled off a coup.
John Scofield, one of the world's most acclaimed and popular jazz guitarists, is a hero of local guitar sensation, James Muller. With the John Scofield and Joe Lovano Quartet headlining his 19th festival, Jackson threw the two guitarists together as a fitting climax to the event, the band completed by Scofield/Lovano bassist Matt Penman (with whom Muller has recorded) and lively, grooving Melbourne drummer Ben Vanderwal.
Muller, whom Scofield described in glowing terms, shrugged nerves aside to be in brilliant form, and Scofield produced his most electrifying playing of the tour. Their thrilling, high-energy virtuosity buffeted the central nervous system, and further confirmed Muller's stature as a major post-Wes Montgomery guitarist.
There was a spirited evocation of Melbourne's multicultural Footscray from Peter Knight's Way Out West, featuring Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Dung Nguyen and Paul Williamson's bruising tenor saxophone. Bernie McGann's surging set with Warwick Alder, Brendan Clarke and Andrew Dickeson and the bristling dynamic extremes and rhythmic complexity of the Antripodean Collective, with Tinkler, violinist John Rodgers, pianist Marc Hannaford and drummer Ken Edie also stood out."
www.jazzandbeyond.com.au
Peter Wockner
"The Wangaratta Festival of Jazz is surely Australia's Jazz heaven......"
The Herald Sun
Roger Mitchell
5/11/08
"Australia's pre-eminent jazz outing did not suffer from its year under the Merriwa Park big top, which replaced the demolished Wangaratta Town Hall. The new arts centre will be bulging for the 2009 festival."