BUY CD Paths and Streams
Matt McMahon
4 ½ Stars
This album, the result of Sydney pianist Matt McMahon winning the Freedman Fellowship in 2005, successfully combines a modern jazz quintet with a string quartet. The group plays McMahon’s arrangements of originals from Australian composers including Peter Sculthorpe. Most lead work falls to McMahon’s piano, James Muller’s guitar or Phil Slater’s trumpet: consummate improvisers all. The challenge in such a combination is to avoid scoring the strings (two violins, viola, cello) as mere sound effects or backdrops. McMahon overcomes clichés by using laid back tempos or passages where out of tempo where the strings assume integral importance. In uptempo sequences and full-on solos, the strings are prudently silent. Classical influences are evident: Beginnings features strings and pensive piano in a beautiful pastoral theme, while the title track pitches classical strings against mallet and cymbals percussion. Mostly, the album has jazz sources, notably in Lissom, where trumpet tremelos build high-frequency excitement against McMahon’s alternately fast-running, then stabbing piano. John McBeath - The Australian
Matt McMahon
Paths and Streams
Pianist Matt McMahon has used prize money from the 2005 Freedman Jazz Fellowship to record settings of Australian compositions. Most are by jazz colleagues but one is by singer Robyne Dunne and the first uses a passage from Peter Sculthorpe’s Piano Cocerto.
As on most tracks, the theme is played in a singing, almost brassless tone by trumpeter Phil Slater against McMahon’s lovely string quartet arrangement, then subjected to improvisation.
Slater’s tone darkens dramatically at points and rises to high trills across the beat, as if blown about in the upper harmonies. Finally the trumpet spears brilliantly over a room-flooding ensemble, trailing back down to tranquillity.
A grand opening, matched often by subsequent tracks, all beautifully recorded. On all tracks the bass and drums of Brett Hirst and Simon Barker move with uncanny free precision. John Clare - SMH