ANDREA KELLER QUARTET (Melbourne)

Mon 27 Apr 2009 @ 5:00pm

Admission Members $15 PJS Student Members $8 Concessions $18 Guests $22

It's 4/5 time on the road with AKQ ON their first Australian tour of 2009, ARIA and Bell Award-winning Andrea Keller Quartet (AKQ) will create musical links with five of Australia's great creative improvisers. Five cities, a different guest in each - and the result is five unprecedented nights of creativity. In Perth Jamie Oehlers will contribute his saxophone talents, joining pianist Andrea and her long term collaborators Eugene Ball (trumpet) Ian Whitehurst (tenor saxophone) and Joe Talia (drums) to perform new works created specifically for this `Collaborations' tour. Five meet Four `Collaborations' gives the AKQ the rare opportunity to invite leading Australian improvisers to add new dimensions to the ensemble's sound. Stephen Magnusson (Melbourne) Phil Slater (Sydney) Miroslav Bukovsky (Canberra) John Rodgers (Brisbane) and Jamie Oehlers (Perth), are the AKQ's five guests. Each of these musicians has an inimitable musical voice and renowned strength of concept. Andrea Keller's new compositions set a scenario in which the distinctive sound of the AKQ is maintained, while the fifth musician is given his head, to respond spontaneously to the music. Each concert will be entirely unique and unprecedented. Album reviews The AKQ has released three highly acclaimed albums. Thirteen Sketches took the Best Jazz Album Aria in 2002. Both Angels and Rascals and Little Claps were nominees for ARIA's Best Jazz Album, and in 2008 Little Claps won the Bell Award for Best Australian Contemporary Jazz Album. `One of this country's most daring and fascinating composers, she produces work that bristles with surprises, a powerful blend of European lyricism with space and improvisation' wrote the Age's Leon Gettler, reviewing her Angels and Rascals album (May 5, 2005). `Their music is both friendly and deep. Their colours and textures are brilliantly recorded on this disc - Little Claps - their best, I think.' John Clare (Sydney Morning Herald, November, 2007.) The bass-less AKQ's unorthodox combination of instruments has been described as producing a `chamber music like' approach. They have played major Australian jazz festivals and clubs, and internationally at the Moers Festival (Germany) and the Copenhagen Jazz House (Denmark). For more go to – www.andreakellerpiano.com Andrea's tour is assisted by the Australia Council for the Arts, the federal government's arts funding and advisory body.