I only paid attention to jazz because of my love for Damien Chazelle and his masterpieces that held jazz at the center: La La Land and Whiplash. I regularly enjoy instrumental music because of film scores, but listening to A Gathering by The Jac – a tour de force of cutting edge jazz – I’ve imagined a film from music rather than the inverse.
It’s been cleared. I’ve only thought about music in reference to the meaning of the words or the visual pursuit it escorts. The APRA nominee had me questioning “but.. what is an instrumental on its own?”. Digesting it as its own entity was personally difficult but after getting help from a few jazzy namely, Paul Burgess, Jimmy Olsen, and local prodigy Mark Bulos, I have found myself eminently fond of the journey in A Gathering!
The journey begins with “Beyond The Palace”, an absolutely vibrant starting piece. One of its strongest points were the melodies disseminating; highlighting the specific individual sounds of the instruments, especially the power in the drums and different saxophones!
My personal favorite was how both “Lullaby (MV Sewol)” and “Ritual” perfectly accompanied the climax that is “Tui”. In reference to Tui’s thick-to-calm texture progression, it delivers a great mixture of drums and bass. On my first listen I found that some sections felt slightly discontinuous. But as I listened on, the piece had a certain coherence formed from the initial fragments, and procured only artistry… and I can’t wait to hear more of it!
7/10: Jimmy Olsen, resident artist at the Daily Planet
