Elements Steve Barry & Judy Bailey

• 1 Magma 01:23
• 2 Exordium 02:39
• 3 Fairy Goblins' Dance 03:38
• 4 The Witching Hour 08:17
• 5 Tane-Rore 04:47
• 6 The Dinosaur Plod 09:51
• 7 Maelstrom 03:10
• 8 New Dawn 07:30
• 9 The Forest Sleeps 01:31
• Total Runtime 42:46

Info for Elements

This album of contemporary piano music for two pianos is an entirely improvised set of pieces featuring two of Australasia’s most fearless and adventurous musicians. Recorded live in a one-set, entirely improvised concert at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in August 2018, Elements encapsulates the humour, vitality, and intuitive, empathetic communication and creative spirit of a now-longstanding musical partnership. Since a debut duo performance in 2011 following Barry’s undergraduate studies with Bailey in the Conservatorium’s jazz program, annual revisitings in concert have seen the emergence of a unique improvisatory telepathy both in the moment-to-moment musical choices and the broader arcs of each set.

Expat New Zealand pianist Barry studied under the exceptional Australia Bailey when he attended Sydney's Conservatorium of Music (where Mike Nock also taught) on a jazz course and almost immediately discovered they had a mutual understanding when it came to live improvisation.

Barry called it “telepathy” and this session recorded live in August 2018 confirms that.

The album title refers to time as much as the five elements (pieces here include Magma, Tane-Rore, The Dinosaur Plod, Maelstrom, New Dawn and at the end The Forest Sleeps).

So there an exploratory, evocative thread binding the nine pieces which are by turns brooding (the short opener Magma), dreamlike as atoms and molecules draw together (Exordium), playful (Fairy Goblins' Dance), muscular (Dinosaur Plod) and busy (the three minute Maelstrom, of course).

Often with demanding, improvised music we say that this music is not for everyone (or some other similar consumer warning).

But while this by description – solo pianos, free improvisation – might seem to require that counsel, that isn't the case here.

This is highly approachable, utterly engaging, sounds like the music for a contemporary dance production (shut your eyes) and is never so far out that you don't feel it will come back.

Take the journey through time and the mind.

Steve Barry, piano
Judy Bailey, piano

Produced by Steve Barry and Judy Bailey
Recorded by Ross A’hern at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 8th August 2018
Mixed by Ross A’hern
Mastered by Steve Garden

Dr. Steve Barry
is a New-Zealand born pianist, organist, composer and improviser based in Sydney, Australia. A sessional lecturer in improvisation and jazz piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Steve maintains a busy schedule composing, teaching and performing across Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Steve’s music reflects his parallel interests in jazz and 20th century classical music, dancing between dense composed structure and free improvisation, and reflecting a fascination with harmonic colour and an eclectic palate of influences ranging from Paul Bley to Elliott Carter. His doctoral thesis and portfolio investigated the uses of pitch class sets, serialism and intervallicism as tools for composition and solo and collective improvisation.

Steve is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bell Award for Young Australian Jazz Artist of the Year (2013), 2nd place in the National Jazz Awards (2013), and a BBM Travel Scholarship (2011). He was a finalist in the 2019 & 2017 APRA Professional Development Awards and a nominee for the 2016 Freedman Fellowship.

Steve is the Co-founder of Orbiturtle, an artist-run organisation dedicated to curating new collaborations between artists from across the Asia-Pacific region, and promoting the sharing of creative practices and philosophies between eastern and western musical and artistic traditions. Orbiturtle was awarded an APRA Development Grant in 2016 to undertake a week-long residency in a Buddhist temple in Osaka, Japan with the acclaimed koto player and experimental improviser Michiyo Yagi.

In 2017 Steve attended the Banff Centre's two-week Composer-Pianist Collaborative, where he composed and premiered new works for solo piano and studied with leading American improvisers Craig Taborn and Cory Smythe.

Steve's recent release for avant-garde jazz quartet, Blueprints & Vignettes (2018), received a 4-star review in the Sydney Morning Herald. Past recordings Puzzles (2014), Steve Barry (2012), as well as the Australia-Japan collaboration Orbiturtle's Sakura (2015), also received 4 star reviews in the The Australian.

As an improviser Steve has performed with a host of acclaimed international artists including Jay Rodriquez, Mimi Jones, Camille Thurman, John Hollenbeck, Theo Bleckmann, George Coleman Jr. and Arun Luthra (USA), Michiyo Yagi and Yoshio Suzuki (JPN), as well many prominent Australian musicians and groups - among them The Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra, Dale Barlow, Jamie Oehlers, Sean Wayland, James Muller, Andrew Dickeson and Andrew Gander.

Steve grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and began playing the piano at age 4. As a teenager he received the Most Outstanding Musician (2007), Best Pianist (2007), Best Keyboardist (2006, 2008), Best Composition (2008) and Band of Festival (2007, 2008) awards from the Tauranga International Jazz Festival Youth Competition. Relocating to Australia in 2009 to study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Steve graduated with a Bachelor of Music (Jazz Performance) with First Class Honours in 2011.

This album contains no booklet.