Before Time Could Change Us has won the 2005 ARIA for Best Jazz Album. The album is a collaboration between Paul Grabowsky, vocalist Katie Noonan and poet Dorothy Porter, who wrote the lyrics.
"The songs - settings of poems by Dorothy Porter - use extended harmonic structures, subtle rhythms, huge leaps to the upper register, tempo and mood changes and beautifully integrated, jazz-based arrangements. They could almost be called jazz arias. It's a leading-edge suite, animated by Noonan's superbly expressive voice soaring through her amazing soprano range, making it quite unlike anything previously recorded here or overseas. John McBeath The Australian
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When my good friend Lyndon Terracini invited me to compose a song cycle for his wonderful Queensland Biennial Festival of Music, I had no hesitation in asking Dorothy Porter to write the songs with me. The author of such classic verse novels as "The Monkey's Mask" and "Wild Surmise", Dot is one of the great wordsmiths of our time, able to compress complex ideas and emotions into a few very well-chosen words.
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My initial idea had been to write a cycle of twelve songs about love, each associated with a sign of the zodiac; Dot just kept them coming, and finally we had sixteen. In fact a seventeenth exists already, and may well prove to be the first of our next cycle. And the singer? Well, what can I say about Katie Noonan, except that a finer musician/vocalist would be hard to find anywhere. She sings these songs with passion and commitment, accompanied by the best band I could hope for: Scott Tinkler, trumpet, Simon Barker, drums and Philip Rex, bass. I play piano, understandably. As usual, the design has been wonderfully realized by Jeff Wassmann. The album was recorded by Robin Gray, with whom I have worked for twenty years. Also I had the advantage of my own beautiful piano, a Boesendorfer, which is unrivalled as a recording instrument by any that I have encountered over the years.
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Recorded two months before Tales, Big Adventure is my fourth Australian trio project. With Philip Rex on bass and Niko Schauble drumming, I am free as a player and composer to go anywhere musically, and I feel that we set ourselves some exciting challenges on this recording.
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The title track is a waltz which uses the South Indian principle of subdivision of the pulse into four and then five beats as the solos unfold. 'Wicked" changes metre in almost every bar, before slipping into a different tempo for the last few bars of the form. There is a gentler version of "Silverland", my tribute to the songwriting of Daniel Johns of silverchair, and a long rendition of "Wist" featuring a remarkable bass solo by Phil.
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My tribute to NYC, my favorite place after Melbourne. My dream all-star band, with Branford Marsalis and Joe Lovano on soprano and tenor saxes respectively, my old comrade Ed Schuller on bass and the irrepressible Jeff Tain Watts on drums. Scott Tinkler, who is a master interpreter of my music, proves that he is totally at home in such company.
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The tunes are a mix of old and new: "Tailfin" and "Angel" from "Viva Viva" are revisited, "Silverland" and "Wist" are reworked trio tunes, Sideshow Sarabande was originally composed as a two-piano vehicle for Mark Isaacs and myself some years back. Four tunes were written especially for the project: "Medium Rare" pays homage to Wayne Shorter, "Updraft" is a post-bop tune with ridiculous changes, "Circle of Trust" was inspired by Bjork, and "Reason and Rhyme" is a hymn with surprising enharmonic twists. For the US release on Sanctuary, Philip Rex's fantastic remix of "Silverland" was included as a bonus track.
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