ESSAYS

This section includes essays on various jazz subjects, written by a number of writers. Contributions are welcome. Writers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. Photographs to illustrate those essays are welcome. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of articles in this folder.

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL 2025

by Ian Muldoon

November 2, 2025

Trying to connect is the musician's task, just as the writer tries to sensibly convey in words the effect of witnessing musical creation happening before him - words that slip and twist, shimmer and shake. The writer’s means have been damaged some might say poisoned by governments, advertising, social media or indeed commerce generally and by the jargon of academia and by the media. Having to actually say this reflects the present “war on words” that is part of the war chest of the current US administration - are we headed towards meaningless discourse? Examples abound…

HOMAGE TO ROGER FRAMPTON AT LAWSON IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

October 26, 2025

Addresses by Bruce Johnson & Emily Rytmeister

Bruce Johnson: Thanks for being here, and thanks also to Emily Rytmeister for the wonderful tribute to her father, which we shall all be watching in a moment. I worked with Roger on a project for the Australia Council, and played with him on a handful of occasions in that shifting casual gig environment that characterises Sydney. But the film you are about to see will say everything about him in more detail, and more eloquently than I could. It documents Roger’s importance to Australian jazz. In particular it covers a lot of Sydney’s jazz scene over the 1970s and 1980s, and the establishment of the Conservatorium jazz programme. Any tribute I could pay him here, however, would be a gratuitous and less effective version of the film which you are here to watch. I ran a draft of this address past Emily, and with her agreement, I am going to provide some larger context…

HILARY GEDDES: EVOCATIVE BRILLIANCE

by Ian Muldoon

November 9, 2025

Dear reader, may I begin by drawing to your attention a CD cover by the artist Hilary Geddes: Hilary Geddes Quartet Parkside (ABC 2021). Inside the CD there is the CD and a 12-page pamphlet of photos by Geddes - photos that may have been taken by a child untrained in the more formal requirements of Art. For comparison consider the artwork below by Winslow Homer, with its formal qualities steeped in art ideas. In nature there are no straight lines and the perfection of Michelangelo’s David or that of Minimalism is as removed from nature as a straight line. These are instances of humanity's need for order in the face of the unknown or happenstance. Religion brings order. Law brings order. Order brings comfort. In music, humanity has imposed order on it with the 12-tone equal temperament. Jazz musicians may, on the other hand, divert from the order of things…