Chris Cody, piano
Michael Avgenicos, sax
David Groves, bass
James Waples, drums.

Pianist and composer Chris Cody has performed and recorded internationally for the last 25 years while based in Paris. He has headlined at many international festivals including Paris Quartiers d’Eté, London, Rome, Brussels Jazz Marathon, Marciac, Nantes, and Algiers and at a vast array of concert venues throughout the USA, Europe and Africa. He has worked with many outstanding international musicians including Rick Margitza, Roy Hargrove, Glenn Ferris, Carla Bruni, Annie Whitehead, Tina Arena, Michel Jonaz, Rhoda Scott and Herb Geller.

With nine CDs of his music released on international labels he has received glowing reviews and featured on radio and television around the world, and has collaborated on over thirty other albums.

His compositions have been commissioned for the inauguration of the Australian Music Centre Paris, as well as for the Sydney Theatre Company, American Academy of Dance, Pillow Book Dance Company Pittsburg, and other French and American theatre companies, and he has composed the music for eight films, and several TV and Radio documentaries.

He was a member of the judging panel for the 2014 and 2015 Freedman Fellowship Jazz Prize, Australia.

 "Magical!" Piano Magazine, France

"Exhilarating ... a feast of melody… an inspiration never at fault" JazzHot, France

"Full of music and future!" Le Monde, France

"A marvellous climate, between subtle arrangements and vast spaces of improvisation..." Jazz Magazine, France

"Very luminous jazz!" Télérama, France

"This is jazz that takes off for the heights" Figaroscope, France

"A European sensibility with a nod to Debussy" Rolling Stone

"Splendidly rich and varied" Jazzwise, U.K

"A performance full of colour, humour and rhythmic movement." Sydney Morning Herald, Australia

"A fine mix of superior technical talent and youthful inventiveness" Variety USA

Launched one year ago, Chris Cody's album Not My Lover continues to do well - here are some recent  media highlights:

“A piano style that enthuses, is luminous and breathes, with slicing attacks, a left hand in support with unique chords, a right hand that sings…For Satie, revisited by the blues and the Balkans, is a minor masterpiece…very inspired…a fine and solid quartet and especially a remarkable pianist, like a fish in water in piano trio.” Jazz Hot, France

“The City of Light has the strongest of Jazz associations and Cody captures that intimate relationship perfectly .You can feel the ebb and flow of the city’s life running through his fingertips as he plays. The beauty of the architecture, the elegant Seine, the mad driving through the twisted maze of streets. Cody is a man of great charm and warmth and the compositions echo his urbane humanity.” JazzLocal - John Fenton, NZ

“You feel a particular cosmopolitanism seeping through the music: jazz colliding with European sensibilities and France colliding with African ones. Cody is an equally sophisticated composer and pianist who likes to create mood-based pieces and solos in which a touch of ambiguity or mystery compounds the interest. … Cody generates a striking luminosity from the piano's upper register. “ Sydney Morning Herald

“Cody works with flair and sensitivity... This is an album of talented performers playing varied compositions, adding an unusual jazz piano style that’s incorporates interesting classical ideas and flourishes”. The Australian

“Solid pleasure…a very solid and satisfying disc…a fast, happily frantic dance…top flight musicians…the piano suggests both abandon and contemplation…his playing is often funky with a modern boogie or shuffle feeling to it… a very beautiful re-working of Satie’s Gnossienne No. 3” Loudmouth, John Clare

“Polished composition and pianism … Modern contemporary improvised music doesn’t get much better or more enjoyable than this and Cody proves he is the master of form.” Fine Music Magazine

Barney Wakeford played for our third concert ever, in May 2000.   Since then he's played more than 50 times in ensembles including Barney Wakeford's New Roses, the Nagarm Trio, The League of Rosebud, and Adjective Noun - as well as many solo performances, and hundreds of appearances at Free For All.  For many years he was the driving force behind these concerts, and his commitment to quality music that makes the best use of the acoustics of the room set a standard which we've tried to keep.

His compositions are few, but fantastic.  His collaborations are short-lived, but beautiful.  His improvisations are unpredictable and unforgettable.  He's sensitive about being called sensitive, waxes lyrical about lyricism, and has spent tens of thousands of hours considering the ways chords can progress through the jazz piano.  He's a dark horse, a quiet genius, and on Thursday, one more time, he's going to play the piano at Colbourne Ave

Spike Mason will be once again visiting the North Island to play the saxophone.

At this Colbourne Ave gig you will have the chance to hear him create new melodies with the amazing New York based double bass legend - Mark Lau, who will be visiting Aus for a few brief weeks. Spike and Mark have been musical compadres for over 20 yrs so there will be great music and many stories too. Joining them both will be the always inventive and rhythmically satisfying James Waples on Drums. This will prove to be an exciting nite of new music, old music, and never heard of before or since music...

*actual band may not match photo.

Mark has an extremely minimalist website, even for a jazz musician : marklau.org

Chris is Australian and French.   To prove the French part, here he is in France with a French flag fluttering behind him.

Chris is another Australian musician who left our shores to find fame and fortune where the grass is greener.  He's back, after 25 years composing and playing piano in Paris (and London, Rome, Algiers, the Brussels Jazz Marathon etc).  In that time he's recorded nine albums of his own, and heaps of composition commissions including one for the Sydney Theatre Company, eight films, plus radio, special events, you know the story.

Chris says:
Having just returned from France, a concert in Paris and the Bastille Day celebrations, we will be playing an exciting mix of originals, standards, and some French pieces including: I love Paris (Cole Porter), La Javanaise by French maestro Serge Gainsbourg, and even some Eric Satie! We re-work the French music to capture the more contemporary sounds and grooves of Paris and the many African and Arab influences. This music is featured on the album we have just recorded, due for release in the  spring. The band has also been invited to perform at Wangaratta.

Chris Abrahams - piano
Mike Majkowski - bass
James Waples - drums

Established in 2007, ROIL play their own original style of jazz-inspired improvised music. Their music draws upon a varied pallet; at times it comes close to free jazz, at other times to experimental improvisation, while also referencing other styles such as minimalism and ambient music. A roil piece incorporates aspects of textural improvisation, bringing extended techniques to bear on a collective sound world, while also being melodic and conventionally rhythmic. Bringing together the abstract and the figurative.

''A beautifully weighted trio, full of delicacy, mesmerizing accumulations of detail and engulfing power.'' - John Clare

This performance celebrates their 3rd release 'Raft of the Meadows' (limited edition LP) on the Lithuanian label NoBusiness Records

web link: https://sites.google.com/site/mikemajkowski/roil

Francesca returns with a quartet - James Waples on drums, Alex Boneham on bass, and Nic Verdanega on guitar.

Back from an extended hiatus, the latest incarnation of the Marty Wieczorek Quartet features Marty’s beautiful compositions, drawing on an eclectic range of influences from Radiohead to Charlie Parker to Mahler and Tomasz Stanko. For a taster, go to: www.martywieczorek.com

The Marty Wieczorek Quartet features:

Marty Wieczorek on Sax
David Devries on Guitar
James Waples on Drums
Thomas Botting on bass

Marty Wieczorek has performed with some of Sydney's most beautiful jazz musicians including Aaron Flower, Evan Mannell, James Waples, and Abel Cross, appearing at some of Australia's great jazz venues and has toured his music nationally. He is now practicing as a provisional psychologist, so this is a rare opportunity to hear this exceptionally lyrical and unique musical voice.

"Excellent blend of jazz sensibilities with more abstract textures. All four members of the quartet contribute great things." - Lloyd Swanton

Simon's quartet has been playing his long, sparse compositions for trumpet, piano, bass, and drums for four years.  A couple of years ago Eamon Dilworth (another great trumpet player) asked Simon about his influences.  The answer is an education. thedilworths.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/top-5-simon-ferenci/

Have a listen here, you can buy a hard copy of the album on the night:

simonferenci.bandcamp.com

Back for their fourth Colbourne Ave performance, Chris Abrahams, James Waples, and Mike Markovski might be the most creative improvising trio in Sydney.  totally UN-composed, completely free jazz by three of sydney's free-est improvisors.  Despire their differences in age and history, they clearly understand each other well enough to climb around each others sounds.  ROIL mesmerise you with the way they surge together then careen apart, ramming textures and harmonics against each other in ways that would be totally destructive in less competent hands.

I like what you get when you search flickr for ROIL

Formed in 2010 by seven like-minded individuals from the Sydney jazz and improvised music scene, The A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Orchestra’s unusual sound stems from its unconventional line-up (two saxophones, trumpet, guitar, piano/organ, sousaphone, drums) and the unique musical experiences and interests of its members.  Part improvisation ensemble, part chamber group, each of the members contribute compositions, allowing for an intriguing array of musical styles and approaches to reveal themselves within one performance.

The “Orchestra” also commissions and plays the compositions of external composers, all locally sourced and ethically treated, who find themselves inspired to write or adapt for its instrumentation.  From meticulously through-composed pieces to works that allow exhilarating explorations by some of Sydney’s finest young improvisers, a set from the A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Orchestra is constantly shifting and bringing about sounds and colours you’ve never heard, but always wished you had.

Jo Derrick trumpet
Peter Farrar alto
James Loughnan tenor
Dave De Vries guitar
Grant Arthur sousaphone
James Waples drums
Harry Sutherland piano and keyboards

facebook.com/acronymorchestra