The Others are here to save jazz as we know we it. What started as an improv experiment in Wangaratta has morphed into a festival-closing spectacle, driven by the charisma and skill of the musicians involved. At first blush, taking two of jazz music’s most respected and elder statesman (keyboard impresario Paul Grabowsky and omni-brass…

An hour before the band is due to take the stage and already 170 Russell is packed. Clearly, Melbourne audiences are amped to see this band! Having received plenty of airplay on community radio in the lead-up to tonight’s headline performance, the crowd (which includes some of the local scene’s heavy hitters) know that their…

Brenton Foster is this year’s winner of the PBS Young Elder of Jazz competition, a unique commission-prize in the Australian Jazz landscape available to working composers and performers under 36 years of age. Love As We Know It is the result, a collaboration with US poet Chris Poindexter across a 5 song-cycle that is personal…

Paul Grabowsky might be doing all the talking, but the driving force behind The Gravity Project is Papua-born, VCA-educated, now Tokyo-based Aaron Choulai. Hunched over an SP404 sampler sitting on what looks like a milk-crate at the back of the stage, Grabowsky tell us that Choulai was the nexus point between the team of local…