Roger Frampton plays a world first - improvisations on prepared piano. Frampton is one of Australia's leading jazz pianists and composers. His interests in contemporary music are broad and eclectic, as this CD shows. It is the first of a set of three featuring Frampton as a soloist (See also TP006 and TP019)

Roger Frampton improvises on two instruments simultaneously: prepared piano and grand piano

AustraLYSIS appears in Australia in several guises, united by the pianist/bassist/composer Roger Dean. All of the guises involve improvisation, and this is the acoustic version of the group.

The players are amongst Australia's finest:
Roger Dean (piano)
Sandy Evans (saxophone)
Tony Buck (percussion / samplers)
Greg White (samplers / electronics).

Jim Denley is no common or garden flute player. His concept of a beautiful sound would probably make James Galway write another book (heaven forbid!). From the tiniest whispered whistle to the loudest shriek, Denley's pallette of sounds is extraordinary. Carefully captured in true stereo, this recording makes you feel as though you're inside Denley's head, making the sounds yourself. This is his first solo CD, and not his last. Experience the world of 'the other flute'.

Riley Lee is a master shakuhachi player and this CD is the result of a meeting with guitarist Geoff Ween-Vermazen in the studio, where they improvised a set of ambient-style pieces. Definitely soul-food here!

The first in a six-CD set containing all the music in the medieval lineage of shakuhachi meditational melody known as 'honkyoku'. This is the first time that such a complete set of this music has ever been recorded. Riley's playing is exceptional.

Further volumes are TP102, 118, 138, 151, 167, 168.

Another in the series featuring this major jazz pianist. He creates moods in these free improvisations that capture the listener's imagination in a way that can be compared to the work of jazz great Keith Jarrett.

Perhaps best-known for her stunning recordings with the medieval group 'Sinfonye', Stevie Wishart is also a renaissance woman in that she is a scintillating improviser. She has gathered around her friends with whom she often works in live performances for this unusual and original set of improvisations.

Elliott Dalgleish (saxophones)
Jonathan Dimond (bass guitar and trombone)
John Rodgers (violin)
Ken Edie (percussion)

Artisans Workshop is a Brisbane-based group of young jazz musicians who have worked together for years. Their ease of working together shows and the sparks fly throughout this astounding debut CD. The CD features John Rodgers who has to be one of the most exciting violin improvisers anywhere in the world.

A set of amazing improvisations on this unlikely instrument. The recording was made in a water storage reservoir that serves inner Sydney. It was opened for the first time in its 100 years for repairs, and revealed a cathedral-like space ideal for recording. It rained heavily before the recording and continuous water dripping is a feature of the sound. (Ideal for cooling off in hot weather).

Jim Denley - flutes, saxophone and voice
Chris Mann - voice and text
Rik Rue - samples and tape
Amanda Stewart - voice and text
Stevie Wishart - violin, live electronics, hurdy-gurdy and voice

This CD contains twenty six tracks called simply A to Z. Machine for Making Sense has been performing and touring world-wide for several years and is totally unique. The five players weave highly textured material that brings music and text together in startling ways.

 

David Jones (drums)
Daryl Pratt (midi vibraphone)
Adam Armstrong (bass)
Carmen Warrington (vocussion)
Don Burrows (flute)
Mike Nock (piano)

Atmasphere is a Sydney jazz band specialising in virtuosic performances of their own works. Some tracks have a Zen feel, others are just sheer pleasure rippling from more notes per second than you ever thought possible. Guest spots by Don Burrows and MikeNock amplify the pleasure.

Ruined pianos? True! And some ruined accordions. Ross Bolletter's taste in found musical objects is given free reign in this CD, where the gathered sounds are subjected to a little studio manipulation and the results are like nothing you've ever heard before - this is a promise!

AustraLYSIS:
Roger Dean (piano, synthesiser, samples)
Sandy Evans (soprano and tenor saxophones, voice)
Tony Buck (percussion, samples, voice)

This must be the most unusual 2-CD set on the market in improvised music. Each CD contains one hour-long improvisation and the three players really let their hair down! What is so amazing is that each player is SUCH a different personality, yet somehow it all works.

An unusual CD and a world-first. Steve Hunter is a consummate musician and his new bass guitar allows him considerable creative freedom. This is a real solo CD, with some tracks multi-tracked.

Guy Strazzullo (guitars)
Craig Walters (saxophones)
Keith Manning (tabla and percussion)

A most intriguing musical mix here - Indian and jazz work well together in these capable hands. Strazzullo is one of the most individual guitarists working in Australia, and quite a composer!

Simone de Haan (trombone)
Daryl Pratt (percussion)
Phil Treloar (percussion)

An improvising contemporary music group, this ensemble has created a CD consisting of a major work from each composer/performer linked by free improvisations recorded in the studio.

12 new Australian solo cello works written for David Pereira - a project which celebrates the handing back of Uluru (Ayers Rock) to its traditional indigenous owners. The musical responses are varied, from the digeridoo sounds underpinning Hopkins' work to the modernism of Dean.

Wesley-Smith asks Pereira to sing along, which he does admirably! Two of Australia's finest jazz pianist/composers, Mike Nock and the late Roger Frampton explore tender song-like melodies. The cover painting was commissioned from Newcastle artist David Middlebrook.

Daryl Pratt (vibes)
Carl Orr (guitar)
Steve McKenna (guitar)
Adam Armstrong (bass)
Andrew Gander (drums)

One of Australia's most interesting jazz groups, plays original material that is rhythm-rich and performed with virtuosity and style.

Guy Strazzullo (guitars)
Craig Walters (saxophones and flute)
Kevin Hunt (keyboards)
Keith Manning (tabla and percussion)
Fabian Hevia (drums and percussion)

Guy Strazzullo is one of the rising stars in the Australian jazz firmament. His guitar playing is awesome - strong and vital, equally at home with the classical repertoire as the improvised. The music is a mixture of jazz, Latin and Indian - a unique blend brought about by the eclectic group of musicians he has drawn around him to create this body of work.

Roger Dean (keyboards, computer programming)
Sandy Evans (saxophones)
Greg White (sound manipulation, computer programming)

An unusual release of music improvised live with computer-generated improvisations. Sandy Evans is astonishing here. Dean has provided most of the germinal material.

PLEASE NOTE: This CD is currently out of stock. We can supply FLAC and MP3 files with PDFs of the booklet. Please contact us for details at tallpoppies@iinet.net.au

19 tracks selected from the Tall Poppies catalogue showing the variety and depth of composition and performance in Australia today.

PLEASE NOTE: This CD is currently out of stock. We can supply FLAC and MP3 files with PDFs of the booklet. Please contact us for details at tallpoppies@iinet.net.au

This monumental 6-CD set is now half way! Riley Lee was the first non-Japanese musician to become a grand master in shakuhachi. In this series of CDs he presents the complete lineage of the orally-transmitted 12th century Japanese meditation melodies known as 'honkyoku'. This is, quite simply, music for the soul.

Jann Rutherford (piano)

Jann Rutherford is one of the most distinctive voices in Australian jazz. A young New-Zealand-born pianist, this is her first solo CD. It contains only original compositions, and was funded by the Emerging Artists Scheme of the Australia Council. Australia's greatest jazz pianist Mike Nock writes this introduction to Jann Rutherford:

'Jann Rutherford is a wonderful pianist. With this beautifully recorded debut solo CD, I would hope a much larger audience, who might otherwise never have the opportunity to delight in her music, can now get to hear for themselves why she is so highly respected among her fellow musicians. Playing a variety of original compositions and improvisations, Jann explores many moods in which her beautiful sound, sensitive ear for harmonic nuance and warm expressiveness are heard to full advantage.'

with:
Roger Frampton - piano
Daniel Herscovitch - piano
Daryl Pratt - percussion
The Seymour Group
Mark Summerbell - conductor

Margery Smith is a Sydney-based musician who has made saxophone her speciality. Some of these works demand an instrumental virtuosity that Smith easily rises to. We also hear her versatility, in a range of music from the rollicking Holland Sonata, to the weaving lines of the Sutherland, to the intellectual and rhythmic demands of the Brophy, Marcellino and Sarcich, to the semi-improvised jazz style of the Frampton.

Acousmatic and electroacoustic works from this dyamnic duo. Dean's music and Smith's words create a unique soundworld that challenges, inspires and intrigues.

The works on this CD have been chosen to highlight the performers and composers whose work has been recorded and released by Tall Poppies over the last four years. In many ways this choice has been a personal one, but I have also tried to sample the many series of CDs that Tall Poppies has initiated over the last ten years.

These ongoing series of recordings include:

• Australian chamber music series featuring individual composers. This sampler gives you a taste of the music of Elena Kats-Chernin, Ross Edwards, Peter Sculthorpe, Anne Boyd and Arthur Benjamin. Also in the catalogue are CDs featuring chamber music by Carl Vine, Nigel Westlake, Nigel Butterley, Richard Meale, Andrew Ford, Andrew Schultz, John Lemmoné, Georges Lentz, and Margaret Sutherland.
• The Bach series commemorating his death in 1750. Both CDs are represented here.
• Schubert's unfinished piano music, completed and performed by Ian Munro.
• Riley's Lee's mammoth 6 CD set of honkyoku, five of which were recorded in just two afternoons! It's the first time that a whole lineage of these Japanese medieval melodies for shakuhachi has been recorded for posterity.
• Roy Howat's complete Debussy piano music, to eventually occupy four CDs. Howat's is an idiosyncratic view of this music, very much based on literal interpretations of the scores.
• Peter Sculthorpe's complete String Quartets performed by the Goldner String Quartet
• Australian film music, by Carl Vine and Nigel Westlake.

Jann Rutherford - piano
Paul Cutlan –soprano, alto & tenor sax
Roger Manins - tenor sax
Craig Scott - bass
Dave Goodman - drums

Recorded just before her untimely death in early 2003, this CD is a heartfelt testament to Jann Rutheford, one of Australia’s truly individual voices in jazz. Her unique compositional style is here in abundance – Rutherford’s work is brought alive by ideal performances from her chosen musicians. Tall Poppies is proud to bring this remarkable music to you!

Tall Poppies Records is proud to release this fine recording of the Bruce Cale Quartet, consisting of Dale Barlow (flute and saxophones), Roger Frampton (piano), Bruce Cale (bass) and Phil Treloar (drums), each an exceptional creative musician. Recorded 24 years ago at the Adelaide Festival of Arts, these performances document a unique musical journey.

This recording is testimony to the kind of interpretive diversity Roger Frampton and Phil Treloar, in particular, were capable of creating. They were possibly the only musicians in Australia at the time exploring this level of free expression and who were capable of doing so within tightly structured contexts. They created a precedent, one which a number of the younger generation players are now exploring.

Unfortunately there is very little record anywhere of this quartet’s music-making. That is one of the many reasons Tall Poppies Records is releasing this recording – an archival document that is sure to turn heads even a quarter of a century later!

For those lucky enough to have heard and seen this quartet live, and for those that come to it new, the unique level of communication that these four share in exploring Bruce Cale’s compositions will astound and delight.

Paul Cutlan is one of the very few Australian composers who likes to work in the overlap between classical and jazz music. In this project he has found an ideal partner in the NOISE quartet, which loves to extend its performance techniques with improvisation. The main work, Across the Top, was written for solo bass clarinet (played by the composer) and solo bass (performed impeccably by Brett Hirst). This is an extended piece inspired by Paul's many tours to the north of Australia and his responses to the sights and sounds of the outback and its peoples.

Of the remaining three works on this CD, The Dawning Dark is a group improvisation and Times Past and Perhaps Next Time are older works of Paul's that seemed eminently suited to the forces available, and have thus earned themselves a new life.

Listeners will be inspired by the haunting sound-world of this instrumental combination and the beauty of the music.

It’s a rare thing to be able to showcase a performer’s work over a forty-year period. This 2-CD set does just that. Roger Dean has had a serious career in improvisation, ranging from his performances over that time to his books written on the subject. This pair of CDs contains some of his best work since 1978 on his main instrument, the piano. The music shows the depth and breadth of his musical interests, and the skill he brings to performing. One can also see how he has re-invented himself musically over that period, during which he has also re-invented his professional working life, from running a heart research institute, to becoming a university vice-chancellor, to his current university research.

Dean opines that this release was inspired by the ground-breaking set of CDs Tall Poppies released in the early 90s of the improvisations of the late Roger Frampton. In this 21st year of Tall Poppies, it feels somewhat like a coming of age, when a project from the beginning inspires a new project a couple of decades later.

All pianists and improvising musicians will find food for thought in this CD set.

This CD release is part of Tall Poppies’ 21st birthday celebrations.

The essential ingredients for this CD: Sandy Evans loving the dawn photos taken in Shoalhaven Gorge by Belinda Webster in the early 2000s; A supporter in Tasmania offering to fund the project; Sandy writing some amazing music to be heard with the photos; an eclectic group of friends agree to play and record this music.

What you have is a suite of duos interspersed with Alon Ilsar's groundbreaking sonic wizardry. A brilliant sense of time and place in the music; superb performances.

This would have to be one of the most intriguing musical releases on CD in Australia so far this century!