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In The Waves

by Steve Barry

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    6-panel Digipak in resealable eco-friendly shrink wrap, with artwork by Jamie Breiwick.

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1.
2.
First 11 09:10
3.
4.
5.
Thixotropy 08:02
6.
7.
In The Waves 09:07
8.
Float 10:17

about

In The Waves (2023) - Earshift Music

Sydney based pianist Steve Barry’s latest release, In the Waves, features celebrated drummer Eric Harland, saxophonist Will Vinson and bassist Tom Botting, in a compelling collection of original virtuosic modern jazz. Born out of a pandemic-inspired reconnection with ocean swimming, the album’s eight tracks keep the physical and philosophical qualities of water as a common thread. Equal parts reflective, bubbling and free-flowing, In the Waves is an emphatic statement from "one of Australia’s most inventive composer/improvisers" (Loudmouth).

Barry’s output has a chameleonic quality in its traversal between genre; recent projects include the Hammond organ trio Green Thumbs, the avant-garde Blueprints & Vignettes, an album of free improvisations with koto player Michiyo Yagi, and a chamber work for pioneering new music group Ensemble Offspring.

With In the Waves Barry marks a further cycle back to the modern jazz roots heard most recently with his Japanese trio Polyglot - described by luminary pianist Mike Nock as “stunning…the cutting edge of jazz today”. Composed largely during Sydney’s four-month Covid lockdown, the album’s 8 tracks keep the physical and philosophical qualities of water as a common thread; the title track evokes the feeling being powerlessly tossed around by the ocean, and others reflect on the nature of water to work it’s way past obstacles, or of solids that become more liquid and thus more agile under pressure - apt metaphors for the trials and triumphs of the last few years of the pandemic. The music showcases Barry’s trademark “harmonic adventurousness and non-bombastic sense of drama” (SMH) throughout, from the spiralling triplets of First 11 and Tug lightly to the glistening opening chords of Half Moon Lights.

Bringing the music to life are a stellar cast of local and international players. Drummer Eric Harland is one of the most acclaimed and prolific artists of his generation, best known for his work with contemporary pioneers such as Charles Lloyd, Terence Blanchard and Kurt Rosenwinkel, and as a go-to sideman for countless contemporary groups.

Long based in New York, the city’s 2020 Covid lockdown saw saxophonist Will Vinson and partner Jo Lawry return with their daughter and son-on-the-way to Lawry’s native Adelaide. Now living in Sydney, Vinson has been described as “a marvel of textural beauty and musicality” (All About Jazz) who “challenges the notion of how jazz is defined in this era" (Downbeat). Barry’s fellow kiwi expatriate, award-winning composer, bassist and renowned beer brewer Thomas Botting completes the ensemble in continuation of a now decade-long musical partnership.

Barry discusses his choice of personnel: “Will and Eric have been constant threads across many of my favourite records, so I’m thrilled to have had the chance to get them together in the studio to play this music. Will demonstrates his trademark lyricism throughout, navigating my occasionally indecipherable chord symbols with the same poetic ease I hear in his own prolific output. The title of this record is also a fitting description for how it feels playing with Eric – a bubbling momentum like riding the crest of a wave: being held up, driven forwards, and sitting on the precipice all at the same time. As one of my oldest musical comrades Tom is the vital glue that brings it all together, with the hook up between him and Eric on clear display throughout the record, especially on On Dirt and Alchemy.”

Recorded in mostly first takes over a day at Free Energy Device Studios - a common birthplace of much Sydney jazz - In the Waves offers a daring, multi-faceted take on the genre. Barry’s adventurous compositional ear and background in 20th century classicism is on clear display, deftly balancing an obvious fluency in the jazz vernacular - a folk-like melodicism rings clearly through - with a restless inclination towards chromatic spices and flirtations with the chaotic.

It’s a compelling collection from a pianist described as “one of Australia’s most inventive and accomplished composer/improvisers” (LoudMouth), and one that sets a further landmark in Barry’s evident pursuit of new interpretations of the label “modern jazz”.

About the music

New Zealand famously straddles the boundary of two tectonic plates, the meeting of which forges the Southern Alps. After a long time away from my roots there, a run up the Port Hills near Christchurch and the view out over the plains towards Mt Cook reminded me of the massive time scales of the geological stories around us, if we can take the time to look. Lithospheric plays with this idea by exploring the possibilities of a static harmony over a shifting bass note.

I find composing to a brief (especially an arbitrary one) helps me to escape from habit traps and creative roadblocks. First 11 is the product of a homework pact I made with student: to write a melody with an 11-bar A section and a 6 bar bridge. I may have cheated in the final version for this session, but I guess they’re my rules to break!

On Dirt and Alchemy is inspired by the Latin in sterquiliniis invenitur, meaning literally “in filth it shall be found” and often translated as “that which you most need will be found where you least want to look”. I’ve only seen this play out more in my life – that dirt can be alchemised to gold, and the bigger the pile of dirt, the bigger the pay off in the end.

Half Moon Lights is a moment of pause, a contemplative look out over the moonlit ocean towards the city lights. The song opens with and cycles back to a min7(b5b9) chord, to my ears one of the most poignant – a kind of bittersweetness also captured in the Greek word charmolypi.

Thixotropy is the nature of some semi-solid substances to become water when subjected to physical force. For me it also evokes Bruce Lee’s iconic advice to “be water, my friend”, which felt especially relevant during the upheavals of the pandemic. Here the melody ducks and weaves around what is essentially a blues with a bridge.

I love the way that Elizabeth Gilbert paints a picture of creative ideas as life-forms that wander the world searching for receptive human partners to help be made manifest. Tug lightly on the invisible thread is a reflection on the art of being open to, finding, then gently coaxing and spinning out those ideas into music; allowing ideas to sing through while also offering them glimpses of what they might like to become through compositional techniques, theory, etc etc. I’ve often found this to be a kind of simultaneous holding and letting go; hold too lightly and the idea disappears, too firmly and it flees, and somewhere in middle is the zone where Big Magic (Gilbert’s 2016 bestseller) can happen.

After a long hiatus I recently rediscovered a love of ocean swimming. In the Waves owes its title to a colleague and captures some of the feeling of being tumbled around and spat out by the surf; here a melody in unusual phrase lengths dances over the top of a tumultuous rising and falling bass line in 11/8, and all against Eric’s unrelenting accompaniment.

A fitting closer, Float tumbled out fully formed in one of those rare creative outpourings a few nights before the session. Tom and Will feature on the melody here, with the frenetic 11/8 of the In The Waves transformed to a gently bobbing 11/4 in the piano, steading the ship into the sun after the stormy seas.

credits

released March 31, 2023

Steve Barry – piano
Will Vinson – alto and soprano saxophones
Thomas Botting – bass
Eric Harland – drums

All compositions © Steve Barry 2022 APRA|AMCOS

Recorded June 7th 2022 by Richie Belkner at Free Energy Device Studios, Sydney
Mixed by Richie Belkner at Free Energy Device Studios
Mastered by Nate Wood at Kerseboom, New York
Design by Jamie Breiwick
Photography by David Collins (front cover) and Drew Norley (inside panels)

Will Vinson plays an Amsterdam Winds Free Wind alto saxophone and D'Addario reeds and accessories.

Eric Harland plays Sakae drums, Vic Firth sticks, Remo drumheads and Zildjian cymbals.

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about

Steve Barry Sydney, Australia

Steve Barry (PhD) is a pianist, organist, composer and improviser and educator based in Sydney, Australia.

He is the recipient of numerous awards including an APRA Professional Development Award and the Bell Award for Young Australian Jazz Artist of the Year.

Steve is faculty member of the Jazz program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
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