Welcome to Australia

The Tomasz Stanko concert was on the Friday night, so I'd originally planned to stay in Sydney on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, but Mrs Fool, ever sentient of the opportunity to save a few dollars, found that the hotel tariffs were cheaper on weekdays than Saturdays, so we decided to fly into Sydney on the Wednesday. This was Australia Day, but we saw no reason why this should affect us, especially as we wouldn't be arriving till the evening.

In fact there were advantages to arriving on a public holiday. For a start, the streets were relatively free of traffic, making the taxi journey from the airport to our hotel a swift one. We checked in and went out for a walk, intending to buy some food at a supermarket or convenience store on the way back to eat in our room. It had been a scorcher of a day (the hottest Australia Day in decades, apparently), and the temperature was till in the 30s. Along the way we passed a cheap pasta and pizza place with outside seating facing the street and decided to try it out. The pizza and Greek salad were surprisingly good.

The restaurant was near Darling Harbour, and as we were eating we watched people walking by on their way to view the fireworks display later that evening. A surprising number had Australian flags draped over their shoulders, wore Australian flag T-shirts, or had Australian flags painted on their faces or bodies. I said to Mrs Fool I thought there was something childish about such displays of nationalism. In truth, I find them rather disquieting. Mrs Fool agreed with me, mainly because Haruki Murakami had expressed similar sentiments in a book she had just read (written after Murakami visited Australia during the Sydney Olympics). Mrs Fool then ventured an opinion of her own, expressing surprise at the number of Asian people with Australian flags painted on the faces. I countered by saying that nationalism was about nationality, not about ethnicity, but deep down I knew she had a point. One only needs to think back to the ugly scenes in Manly on Australia Day in 2009, when a mob of up to 100 drunken youths verbally and physically attacked non-white Australians, to realize how easily the celebration of national identity can become a celebration of racial or ethnic pride, something exclusionary as opposed to something inclusionary. On the television news that night, much was made of the fact that arrests in 2011 were down 20% on the previous Australia Day, with only 180 boozy revellers nabbed by police in the entire state of New South Wales.

The following day we shopped (can you call it that even if you don't buy anything?) and in the evening caught the bus to Leichhardt, where we'd booked a table at Elio's, an Italian restaurant we went to several years ago and liked. The meal was OK (and I learnt what a spatchcock is), but negotiating Sydney's bus system during the evening rush hour to get there took some of the gloss off the evening. On the way back, the bus driver (a Sikh) had to swerve and brake to avoid ploughing into a car door, whose owner had chosen the moment the bus driver was pulling out from a bus stop to open it. This was dramatic enough, but the interaction that followed was even more startling. The bus driver, who had brought his vehicle to a stop, opened his door and shouted something at the female driver of the car. (She was plainly at fault; not only was she parked in a bus lane, but she hadn't looked behind her before opening her car door.) She responded by striding over and yelling at the top of her voice, "Don't drive so bloody fast. This is Australia." The subtext was obvious.

The next day we spent the morning looking around the Museum of Contemporary Art and the early afternoon exploring The Rocks. For dinner we went to Medusa, a lovely Greek restaurant not far from Darling Harbour. We had the most delicious entrée of grilled octopus. As we tucked into the tentacled treats, we mused on how the Japanese and the Greeks both share a passion for munching on these multi-limbed molluscs. For a main I had the vegetarian Moussaka, which was so satisfying I had no room for any baklava, a pity seeing as it's possibly my favourite sweet thing on the face of the earth.

And then it was off to see the Tomaz Stanko Quintet at the City Recital Hall. Once again, Stanko delivered. Mrs Fool said it was the best jazz concert she had ever been to. For me the concert didn't quite live up to the experience of seeing Stanko's quartet in 2009, but I put that down to the fact that this time my expectations were so high. It was interesting to see him playing with a completely different line-up. I tend to prefer purely acoustic jazz over anything with amplified instruments, but I found it difficult not to appreciate the skill and sensitivity of the young (compared to the 68-year-old Stanko) electric guitarist and electric bassist. Occasionally the quintet produced a Bitches Brew-like barrage of noise, but for the most part the music was restrained and melodic with just a touch of melancholy. Just the way I like it.

Buzzing

The blogosphere is abuzz with talk of Sacha Baron Cohen playing Saddam Hussein in a movie adaptation of a novel penned by the late Iraqi dictator, but I'm still reeling from the news, first revealed to me in this article on the Guardian website about the current obsession with fact-based movies and novels (Is the concentration on reality stopping writers using the imagination for storytelling?), that Baron Cohen is playing Freddie Mercury in a biopic of the Queen front man. Due out in 2012 apparently.

Speaking of buzzing, I'm off to Sydney tomorrow to see the Tomasz Stanko Quintet. Hoping the concert's as good as the one put on by Stanko's quartet in Wellington a couple of years ago. Back on Saturday.

Privilege

When I checked Tomasz Stanko's official website the other day and saw that he was due to play in San Francisco and New York next month as part of a U.S. tour to promote his new CD, Dark Eyes, I recalled a comment I made back in November last year about timing my proposed epic rail journey across North America to coincide with a concert by either the Polish trumpeter or my other musical hero, pianist Keith Jarrett, and ever so briefly considered flying over to see Stanko in San Francisco and then traveling by rail to New York to see him again at Birdland (and to eat grilled stuff with Erik).

I then remembered that I'm visiting Tokyo later this month and couldn't possibly afford to make another overseas trip so soon after that one. Also, the Keith Jarrett Trio is performing in Tokyo in September-October, and I've promised to take Mrs Fool to see them to celebrate our wedding anniversary. And while I'd dearly love to see Stanko perform live again, the prospect of seeing him with his new quintet doesn't excite me as much as that of seeing him with his old quartet (with Marcin Wasilewski on piano), which I had the pleasure of doing back in March 2009. It seems that that quartet is a thing of the past. It produced just three CDs, including the sublime Lontano, which took me a while to get into but is now one of my all time favourite albums. I consider it a privilege to have seen that quartet perform live.

As Jarrett himself confirmed to an Italian audience in 2007 during one of his infamous outbursts, seeing Keith Jarret perform is also a privilege. Unlike Stanko, however, Jarrett doesn't believe in changing the personnel in his groups much. In fact his current trio (with Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums) has been playing together for more than 25 years. And while I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the trio in Japan, if I had a time machine one of the first things I'd do, probably even before going back to Wellington on the night of 7 March 2009, would be to go back to the Village Vanguard in New York on the night in May 1979 when Jarrett's "European Quartet" (with Jan Garbarek on saxophone, Palle Danielsson on Bass, and Jon Christenson on drums) recorded the album Nude Ants. According to Ian Carr's Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music, Garbarek was having an "off-night," but even that couldn't spoil the magic.

Wellington trip report

Saturday

Keiko drops me off at Christchurch airport just before midday. As I go to check in, members of the Indian cricket team saunter past, fresh from their impressive batting display in Wellington on Friday, and on their way, as it would transpire, to an even more impressive display in Christchurch on Sunday. Half an hour later as I'm waiting to board my plane, I see the Black Caps arrive, looking rather bedraggled.

I love flying to Wellington. It only takes 45 minutes. No sooner has the plane reached cruising altitude than it begins its descent. Or so it seems. It's hardly worth getting out a book, let alone struggling to untangle iPod earphones.

In Wellington, I catch a shuttle to my hotel on The Terrace (which happens to be part of a chain sponsoring the Monet exhibition at Te Papa). It's past the check in time of 2pm, but my room isn’t ready, so I wander down to Willis Street and grab a late lunch (a curry) at a food court. Back on Willis Street, I pass Unity Books and decide to go in for a browse. It's not long before I find a book I've been looking out for for weeks, The China Lover by Ian Buruma. For good measure, I also buy a William Boyd novel, The Blue Afternoon.

I get back to my hotel just after 3pm and settle into my room. Then I remember there's a free big band concert on in Civic Square from 3.30pm, so I head out again, taking a different route down to Willis Street that takes me passed this piece of cone art. Or is it a cone prank? When I pass the same sculpture the following day the cone is gone, so I suspect the latter.

At Civic Square, I stay long enough to catch a couple of numbers by the New Zealand School of Music Big Band directed by Rodger Fox. But I don't like the idea of standing in the sun too long, and wander slowly back towards my hotel, stopping at a few outdoor clothing and book shops along the way. By the time I get back to The Terrace I realize there isn't much time before the first concert of the evening. Because I'm attending two shows in a row, I won't have time for dinner later on, so I start looking for a place to eat. None of the restaurants I check out have started serving dinner (it's only 5pm), so I make do with a large piece of quiche and a glass of wine in a bar just across the road from the concert venue inside the Town Hall.

First up is Tunisian "vocalist and oud virtuoso" Dhafer Youssef, whose backing band consists of a Polish pianist (Marcin Wasilewski), a Canadian bassist, and a Japanese drummer. He's a very engaging performer. He thanks us profusely in halting English a number of times, and also thanks the members of his band, the lighting director, and the soundman at least twice over the course of the show. The tunes are long, often rhythmically complex, but mostly based on simple riffs that are repeated over and over again. Youssef sits centre stage and plays his oud. Occasionally he wanders across to the side of the stage and watches the band perform. He seems to take great delight in Wasilewski's piano playing. During some of the tunes he sings. Or rather, he vocalises. There are no lyrics, but this is not scat, nor is it throat singing. It's more like the Muslim call to prayer set to music.

Youssef announces that the band is playing their final song, but that they'll come back for an encore. The last song ends and the band leave the stage, but despite the rapturous applause they fail to reappear. The house lights come on and there's an announcement. Due to the tight scheduling of events we have to leave the venue right away.

It's 7.15pm. The Tomasz Stańko Quartet is due on stage at 8pm. I walk up Cuba Street and find a nice coffee shop where I wolf down a slice of apple and blueberry pie with cream. I then walk back to the Town Hall and have a glass of red wine in the foyer before going back in to find my (new) seat.

I few weeks ago I was dismissive of the description of Tomasz Stańko as the "Polish Miles Davis." Now I know what people mean. Stańko's trumpet playing has the same clarity of tone, economy, and touches of vulnerability of Davis's. And like Davis, Stańko doesn't like to talk to his audience. He speaks only once the entire time, to introduce the band members. But I'm enthralled from start to finish. The music has all the qualities I hold dear. It's melodic, romantic (but not soppy), haunting (but not depressing), beautiful, moving. Pianist Marcin Wasilewski, playing in his second gig of the night, seems more at home in this all-Polish unit, who meld together perfectly. Before the concert I was a Stańko novice. By the end of it I'm a fan. Even if the rest of the weekend turns out to be a complete disaster, I'm satisfied because I've been to the best concert of my entire life.

Sunday

Sunday dawns calm and fine, one of those perfect Wellington days when the harbour shines. Unfortunately I have work to do, so aside from venturing out to buy breakfast, lunch and coffee, I'm confined to my hotel room until the evening.

At 6pm I meet a couple of friends for dinner, after which it's back to the Town Hall for the Brad Mehldau Trio concert. It's the biggest audience so far, but they're all milling around in the foyer because the doors to the hall are firmly shut. The start time of 8pm ticks passed and still there's no sign of them opening. There's no explanation as to what's happening, but I'd looked at Mehldau's website before coming to Wellington and noticed that he was due to play a concert in Melbourne the previous night, so I suspect he's arrived late and is still doing a sound check.

We're eventually let in and the concert starts around 15 minutes late. Brad Mehldau seems like a very nice man. He has a relaxed stage manner and talks often throughout the show. But his music doesn't do a lot for me. There are one or two nice moments. One is an extended, very classical-sounding solo, which is the only time during the concert that I think he sounds like Keith Jarrett. Perhaps if I'd had high expectations, or had come to Wellington especially to see Mehldau, I'd be disappointed, but I'm still on a high from hearing Tomasz Stańko play the night before.


Monday

Although the day starts out cold and wet, by mid-morning the rain has lifted and it's quite pleasant. I have a couple of hours to kill before I'm due to meet a friend for lunch, and decide to check out the Monet exhibition at Te Papa. When I get to the fourth floor, however, I'm greeted by a long queue and so decide to give Monet a miss. Instead I wander around looking at some of the museum exhibits. I come across a small gallery with some etchings. Among the mostly European works inside is a print by Hiroshige. It's Maisaka from The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido. Except something's wrong. It's a lot smaller than the Hiroshige prints I'm used to. Plus the composition is different from the print of Maisaka I'm familiar with. It's from a different edition of the series, called the Kyoka edition.

After walking around some more I come across this intriguing sign:

I find the colossal squid and start taking some photos, playing around with the different settings on my camera. I'm quite proud of the results.


I leave Te Papa and manage to squeeze in some more shopping (two Tomasz Stańko Quartet CDs, and Edmund White's The Flâneur, which I intend to take to read while walking the Tokaido) before lunch. After lunch there's just time for a coffee before heading back to the hotel to pick up my bag and catching a shuttle to the airport. I've done quite a bit of walking over the weekend. I have no idea how much distance I've covered. But my calves are quite sore. It must be from the hills.

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 76.9km
Days left until departure: 68

Beyond Keith Jarrett

A part of someone's Keith Jarrett collection

I finally got my hands on a printed programme for the Wellington Jazz Festival while in town yesterday. Looking through it, I came across the name of Marcin Wasilewski, a Polish jazz pianist who features on both of the albums I have by French drummer Manu Katché. The first of these albums, Neighbourhood, also features Tomasz Stanko and one-time Keith Jarrett collaborator Jan Garbarek, which is what got me interested in Katché in the first place. Anyway, Wasilewski is appearing with Tunisian vocalist and oudist Dhafer Youssef on Saturday before the Tomasz Stanko concert. I decided I had to go to this as well, so I went into Ticketek and handed over another $55. That's three concerts I'm going to in Wellington this weekend, all at the same venue. If I'd booked them together I would have qualified for a 10% discount, plus I would have saved $12 in booking fees. Never mind. Incidentally, Wasilewski has played with Stanko a lot over the years, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up in the latter's quartet on the night.

Manu Katché is one of the artists I started listening to a few years ago after I decided that my fascination with Keith Jarrett was bordering on the unhealthy and that I should try to broaden my musical horizons. Having said that, I'd found a genre I really liked (understated, melodic, romantic piano jazz, for want of a better description), and I didn’t want to stray too far from that. So I started by checking out other musicians in this genre, as well as some of the pianists who'd influenced Keith Jarrett.

My first port of call was Bill Evans. Evans played piano and cowrote some of the music on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, considered by many to be both the best-selling jazz album of all time and the greatest jazz album of all time. He later went on to revolutionize the piano trio concept. He did this by giving the bassist and drummer more active roles, resulting in more interplay among the musicians. Keiko had a copy of The Bill Evans Album, featuring Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums, so I started listening to this and grew to like it a lot. On some of the tracks Evans plays a Rhodes electric piano, then a relatively new instrument. For this reason some critics have dismissed the album as "gimmicky", but the music is great and it's still one of my favourite Bill Evans trio albums.

Among the collection of CDs my brother Mark left behind when he went overseas was a compilation of Bill Evans tracks called Quiet Now, which served as my introduction to Evans's non-trio recordings, including his solo work (including Conversations With Myself and Further Conversations With Myself, in which he used overdubbing to layer up to three tracks of piano on each song), and his duo work with guitarist Jim Hall. My own collection of Bill Evans CDs now numbers around ten. Last Christmas Mark gave me The Legendary Sessions CD, which includes Evans's two collaborative efforts with Tony Bennett, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album and Together Again, listening to which has helped me overcome my aversion to jazz vocalists.

Other pianists who've been described as having influenced Keith Jarrett and whose music I listen to fairly regularly include Ahmad Jamal and McCoy Tyner. I never really got into Oscar Peterson. I've liked some of what I've heard of Bud Powell, and am interested in hearing more. The same goes for Thelonious Monk.

Some of the pianists I've enjoyed listening to over the years who've undoubtedly been influenced by Keith Jarrett are Tord Gustavsen, John Taylor, Bobo Stenson, and Eliane Elias, although I've pretty much lost interest in Gustavsen, whose playing sounds a bit monotonous to my ears, and the only work of Elias I've heard to date that I really like is on Shades of Jade, an album credited to bassist (and Elias's husband) Marc Johnson. Johnson, by the way, was once a member of the Bills Evans Trio. (Don’t you just love those connections?) Elias recently released an album of Bill Evans tunes, although I'm too scared to listen to it because she sings on some of the tracks. New Zealand pianists in my collection include Mike Nock and Alan Broadbent.

Since I'm going to a concert of his on Sunday evening, I should also mention Brad Mehldau. Mehldau is often compared to Keith Jarrett, although according to some Jarrett fans the similarities are overstated. I must admit I've heard very little of Mehldau. I have listened to a CD he made with guitarist Pat Metheny, but I've only heard snippets of his solo and trio work.

Last year I branched out further and started listening to quite a bit of jazz ensemble music, mostly of the genre known as hard bop. The catalyst for this was seeing a performance by a sextet led by saxophonist Oyama Hideo at Someday, a jazz club in Tokyo. The highlight of the evening was a performance of "This is for Albert" from the Art Blakey album Caravan. Back in New Zealand, I got hold of Caravan and also checked out some of Art Blakey's other work. I gradually built up a small collection of Jazz Messengers albums, mostly from the period in the 1960s when the group featured Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone.

Blakey had a close affinity with Japan. He gave several of his sons Japanese first names. He was one of the first overseas jazz musicians to tour that country, an experience he later described as follows:

"When we hit Japan in 1960 or 61, I never saw anything like it. There were 7,000 heads going up and down at the same time and humming every note of everything we played… When we first went to Japan, they had Lee Morgan shirts, Wayne Shorter overcoats, all that kind of stuff in the department stores. The same kind of publicity the Beatles got in the U.S., we got in Japan, and plus. I think we're the only American artists that had an audience with the emperor. But this country never said a word about it, never a word."

Another classic hard-bop album I listen to a lot is Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth.

I've always had a soft spot for John Coltrane, and have four or five of his albums, including the magnificent A Love Supreme. Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come is another jazz saxophone favourite. The title is a bit of a misnomer. Although he's regarded as a pioneer of free jazz, Coleman's playing on The Shape of Jazz to Come is very melodic and the music quite orthodox, especially compared to something like Coltrane's Olatunji Concert. I hope to add to my Ornette Coleman collection in the future.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 73.9km
Days left until departure: 75

Return to Northlands

Last Monday I drove over to Northlands to look for some new waterproof walking shoes. I'd been looking around town for some New Balance 965s (or the newer 966s) but hadn't seen any. I even tried the New Balance outlet store in Hornby, but without success. I bought the New Balance 748s I wore when we walked the Nakasendo at The Athlete's Foot in Northlands (I walked there on that occasion as part of my training), so I figured I'd go back there. But when I went in and enquired I was told that New Balance had reduced their lineup of walking shoes in New Zealand to just two models, and the 965 wasn't one of them.

Dispirited, I wondered through the mall, stopping at the Ticketek outlet to pick up a ticket to the Tomasz Stańko gig on 7 March. I passed a Front Runner, and decided to go in to see what they had. I was about to try on some Merrells when I spotted what looked like some 965s in the sale section. They turned out to be women's 965s, but the shop assistant reckoned they should fit me (I have small feet and often have trouble getting men's shoes in my size). They felt pretty comfortable. Plus I think they look nicer than the men's version. I actually tried on a pair of 964s (an earlier model of the same shoe) a couple of years ago and they felt stiff compared to my 748s, which put me off buying them. Although they have the exact same soles as the 748s, the uppers are made of a waterproof leather so they're not as flexible (the 748 uppers are a combination of leather and a synthetic mesh material). But the 965s weren't stiff at all, so I bought them. At $100, they were less than half the original price.

Then, as if that wasn't enough shopping for one day, as I was heading back to the car I saw a box set of season 1 of The Wire on DVD for $34.99 and snapped it up. I already have season 5 on DVD. I'm not sure if I'll get the other three seasons (which I've seen anyway, courtesy of Grant). I see a box set of all five seasons is out in the US, and selling on Amazon for US$135. That's $255 in our money, plus there'd be some hefty postage on top of that. With the NZ dollar so weak I've been holding back on Amazon purchases lately. My Wish List is growing, although I was able to cross off one item yesterday when I bought Keith Jarrett's latest release from the iTunes Store for $17.99, saving at least five dollars!

I've since worn the 965s a couple of times to the supermarket and back and so far they seem OK. I'm waiting for some decent rain so I can test them in the wet.

A tale of two festivals

I was just starting to get mildly enthusiastic about April's New Zealand International Jazz and Blues Festival (which despite the grandiose title is very much a local Christchurch event), mainly due to the participation of Mike Nock, a much-underrated New Zealand jazz pianist whose illustrious career stretches back to the 1960s, when he took over from a young Keith Jarrett as the pianist in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and who also led a seminal fusion group called The Fourth Way (is that a Gurdjieff connection?). But I've just seen the programme for March's Wellington Jazz Festival, which despite its far more modest title boasts a lineup that puts the Christchurch event to shame.

How's this for a weekend of fine jazz? Friday night: Mingus Big Band. Saturday night: Tomasz Stańko Quartet. Sunday night: Brad Mehldau Trio. And they've got Mike Nock too, playing in a concert with classical pianist Michael Houstoun. The only slightly disappointing thing about the programme is the description of Stańko as "the Polish Miles Davis". That's about as meaningless as describing Beethoven as "the German Mozart". Still, it's not as bad as the description of Keith Jarrett as "a classical Billy Joel" in this unenlightened review of Jarrett's latest triumph at Carnegie Hall. That's just wrong! The guy doesn't deserve to be at a Keith Jarrett concert. He should have given the ticket to me. And paid for my airfare to New York.