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)

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).

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.

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.

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.

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!

Daniel Herscovitch (piano)
Lisa Moore (piano)
Roger Dean (piano, sampler)
David Pereira (cello)
Anita Beuthien (piano accordion)

A showcase for the clarinet in its many modern guises, this CD presents Peter Jenkin equally at home with Alban Berg, multi-tracked Bach, klezma, tango, jazz and electronics.

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.

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.'

A rare chance to hear such beautiful horn playing without the distraction of bass and drums. Rader and Frampton work beautifully together, playing original compositions, standards and new work improvised in the studio.

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.

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.

Judy Bailey has long been regarded as one of Australia's foremost jazz pianists. As one would expect, she is a formidable composer, and all the works included here are original compositions. The major work here is the delightful Children's Suite, full of gorgeous melodies and charm. The other works reveal Bailey's complete command of the jazz idiom. Her Waltzing Matilda is a view of this tune from various classical viewpoints, pointing to one of Bailey's compositional motivations, being to bring the classical and jazz idioms together.

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.

The music is seductive, tantalising ... the embrace of the tango, capturing the fusion of sax with the gypsy romance of the accordion. Hear the sensual chemistry, evocative of the streets of Argentina as played by these remarkable musicians.

Combining the diverse paths of two pairs of saxophone players, 'Compass' - Christina Leonard, Jeremy Rose, Matthew Ottignon, Luke Gilmore - is one of the most interesting and dynamic groups to emerge in Australia's music scene. Inspired by the idea of breaking down barriers between classical music and improvised jazz, Compass takes an innovative and flexible approach to the Saxophone Quartet, combining influences that are distinct, new and unusual.

Special guest artists are Marcello Maio - piano accordion and Julian Curwin - guitar. Marcello, as one of Sydney's most sought after performer/ composers at only 22, has established himself as a musician with extraordinary and diverse talents. He is equally at home with Jazz, Brazilian, African-American, European folk and Tango. Julian co-founded ARIA-winning gypsy band Monsieur Camembert. He has been performing and composing music his whole life, playing a wide range of instruments, and traversing nearly every style imaginable. He pursues such projects as electro-acoustic experimental pop delicacy Gauche, and quirky tango punk chamber jazz ensemble The Fantastic Terrific Munkle.

This CD presents one work by Colin Bright written especially for his Syzygy Band, an ensemble of outstanding improvising musicians. The score is published in the CD booklet, and this allows a listener to follow the music and see where the music is written out and where it becomes the reponsibility of the ensemble members to improvise.

The music is inspired by the immensity of outer space, as Colin Bright says: “Concepts of space set the mind spinning. The incredible vastness. The minutest particles. No centre. No boundary. No beginning. No end…? Music explores ideas that cannot be put into words and that is what this piece attempts to do. To set the imagination on fire - for the players and the listeners. The performers have to achieve a sense of flow, to connect with each other through the music, in conjunction and opposition. Syzygy!”

Colin Bright is a Sydney-based Australian composer and musician whose music reflects different aspects of being an Australian. This is not the first time his music has been presented by Tall Poppies. The cover of this CD addresses the theme of the music with a magnificent photograph taken by David Malin at the Australian Observatory.