In 2015, Adelaide was designated Australia’s first – and, so far, only – UNESCO City of Music. This designation is explained on the Adelaide City of Music website as both a recognition of excellence and an “investment in the future”, intended to “integrate and engage citizens, music makers and creatives”.
The jazz tradition fits this noble intention well. Jazz is based in community – in the sharing of music among practitioner and audience member alike. There are no clear edges to the spaces in which jazz is played, listened to, taught and learned; oftentimes, they are one and the same. Indeed, integration and engagement between “citizens, music makers and creatives” is exactly what jazz culture is all about.
Adelaide is therefore lucky to have a new event marked in its jazz calendar, and a new space carved out for its jazz community: trombonist Thomas Voss and trumpeter Luke White’s Central Standard Time Big Band residency at the Norwood Hotel, presented on the last Wednesday of every month.
Adelaide’s music calendar is already ripe with a number of regular jazz residencies. Every week, guitarist Django Rowe’s band the Gremilys perform at the Grace Emily Hotel on Wednesday nights, the bar Leigh Street Luggage hosts small trio performances on Wednesdays and Fridays, and the pop-up-turned-permanent French restaurant La Louisiane has live jazz duos Tuesday through to Saturday nights. On a less regular basis, every other Tuesday, the Gilbert Street Hotel hosts the Airbenders, a Hammond organ trio, and on the first and third Monday of every month, Creative Original Music Adelaide (COMA) holds performances at the Wheatsheaf, often highlighting local and visiting jazz talent.
However, Voss and White both felt that there was a gap in the scene for a regular big band gig. A large part of the jazz repertoire – especially the part that regular gig-goers are likely to know – is found in libraries of big band scores, and the discographies of great band leaders and arrangers such as Thad Jones, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sammy Nestico and Bob Brookmeyer.
In a conversation with InReview, Voss explains that the pair wanted the permanency of a residency, “for audiences, for students, and to be able to connect with the music as performers as well”.
This multi-faceted approach is clearly in line with both the broader jazz tradition, and the goals of the UNESCO City of Music. But establishing this kind of residency is not smooth sailing.
“I’ve certainly found it difficult to book venues around Adelaide – especially for jazz gigs,” Voss says. The ravages of COVID lockdowns and restrictions have not made things easier: “In the last couple of years, it’s just been unaffordable for a lot of venues to put their own money into gigs, which has made it really difficult for a lot of musicians.”
One of the challenges is attracting consistent audiences, particularly for recurring events in a city where the musicians say there isn’t a widespread culture of travelling long distances for gigs. This poses risks for band leaders and venues.
However, the Norwood Hotel has a history of supporting live music, especially emerging talent in the jazz scene. “Norwood Live have been great to work with,” says White. “After a few emails, it was literally just, alright, well, work out a day that suits both us and the venue.”
After their initial idea for the residency in late 2023, the pair were able to get the first concert happening in May 2024 and have been packing out the venue each month since.
Thomas Voss: ‘It’s huge, having regular gigs with really great musicians.’
Voss and White run Central Standard Time Big Band with professionalism, and are committed to doing the music justice. They usually book around 17 musicians for each gig, so the biggest risk of all can be losing someone to sickness or scheduling conflicts.
“It’s a challenge,” Voss acknowledges, “but it’s just an in-built challenge with big bands, you know – anyone who runs a big band just takes that as part of it.”
“We also have got the rule that you need to be available for both the rehearsal and the gig, so we can offer the best product possible, and people can have time to learn the music,” White clarifies. “That goes for us, too; if we’re away for a rehearsal, we’re not doing the gig.”
Each month’s program is selected in a similarly rigorous fashion. In recent months the repertoire has included music by artists including Quincy Jones, Sammy Nestico, Neal Hefti and Thad Jones, as well as big band test pieces from this year’s ABODA (Australian Band and Orchestra Directors’ Association) Festival in SA.
“It’s all a bit of a balancing act,” says Voss. “The main thing is we’re not really selecting music by audience request. We’re selecting the music and we’re hoping to grow an audience around that.
“The process is mainly suiting it to the band itself: seeing what personnel we have for each month, and selecting repertoire that suits that personnel.”
Variety is also a factor: “We do some themed gigs around certain composers or bands, and we’re doing some coming up that are more geographical, you know, West Coast, East Coast.”
Voss notes that music students are an important part of their audience.
“We want to create a gig that’s something students can come out to regularly, and hear big band music, and hear it played live, which is a really important part of their education.”
Indeed, for both musicians, the value of the gig as an educational tool for music students is paramount.
“In the last six or seven years, there’s been a real renaissance of original big bands, project big bands, which has been really great, but they only last for one gig, or they only do one or two gigs a year, and they only play new material – which is fantastic, but part of being able to play that new material really well is understanding the old material,” Voss explains.
White adds: “And that’s also what students play, all the time, through school. They play a lot of classic big band music, even if it’s arrangements of classic big band music, so it’s important to try to showcase that, and do it to a high level.”
This kind of community-minded thinking is at the core of the CST Big Band project.
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“I think it’s huge, having regular gigs with really great musicians – for the musicians themselves, for audiences, and for students,” says Voss.
“All these sorts of gigs, you know, they bring a lot of depth to the music scene, and they spread outwards and create lots of other little opportunities around them.”
The next Central Standard Time Big Band performance will be at Norwood Live on August 28.
Edmund Black, a pianist and recent graduate from the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, is the 5th recipient of the Helpmann Academy InReview Mentorship. He is working with Graham Strahle to write a series of articles for publication in InReview.
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