The festival opened with Daniel Susnjar’s Afro-Peruvian Jazz Group, the seven-piece ensemble playing to a capacity crowd in the State Theatre Centre Courtyard. Their original music and arrangements of traditional Peruvian folk songs were greeted with enthusiasm. Susnjar’s joyful, energetic drumming on a bright yellow drumkit set the tone for the coming weekend. Tin Men and the Telephone were up next in a live stream from Amsterdam. Prior to their performance, the audience had been asked to download their Tinmendo app, which allowed participants to create beats, cast votes, send messages, and otherwise participate in the creation of their music. The outcome may not have led to the most brilliant tunes, but the process was definitely fun.

Ticketed performances were centred around the Rechabite Hall and its smaller basement room, the Goodwill Club, and the WA Museum Boola Bardip’s Hackett Hall, making the race from venue to venue easy. I missed a few local acts: Kate Pass’s Kohesia Unplugged Persian Quartet, Gemma Farrell’s gender-inclusive Artemis Orchestra, and the Jessica Carlton’s Sextet. Pass’s Kohesia Ensemble recently launched their much-anticipated second album, Silver Lining, and Artemis Orchestra, their well-received first album, The Elephant in the Room, and Carlton is a trumpeter and composer to watch out for.

The Jess Carlton Sextet performing at the 2021 Perth International Jazz Festival (photograph by Richard Watson)

Female leaders are a formidable presence in the Perth jazz scene. Among them is Hanna Kim, whose trio I did manage to catch. Sometimes called Mrstrio, the happy marriage of its members’ cultures – South Korean pianist Kim, Italian bassist Dario Jiritano, and Chilean drummer Francisco Javier Munoz Melo – produced a distinctly funk-jazz fusion. Her keyboard sounding like a Hammond organ, Kim upended audience expectations with her laid-back interpretation of AC/DC’s ‘T.N.T.’.

Although I have seen on several occasions the Jamie Oehlers Quartet present ‘Soultrane’, their tribute to the music of John Coltrane, the set is always different. Saxophonist Oehlers approaches every performance with total passion. In numbers such as ‘Blues to You’, he pumps the saxophone as if there were not a full set to go. Drummer Ben Vanderwal complements Oehlers’s physicality with his relaxed style, slinging his sticks effortlessly over the drums. Harry Mitchell, on piano, appears to be running on note-fuelled adrenalin. ‘Not too many ballads, might send you to sleep,’ quipped Oehlers and followed with a stunning solo rendition of Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’. The audience lapped it up. Falling asleep was highly unlikely.

The weekend also saw the opening of the refurbished Art Gallery of Western Australia with an exhibition called ‘The View From Here’. In terms of jazz, the view from here is very fine indeed, but I must admit that my PIJF highlight was seeing interstate visitor Scott Tinkler perform again. In duo with guitarist Julius Schwing, this maestro of the trumpet mesmerised the audience. The two men kept their eyes closed throughout their set at the Goodwill Club, all the better to hear the other, to shut out the distractions of sight, their two voices involved in a complex dialogue. Tinkler sent out a skirmish of notes around which Schwing’s rapid-fire strumming, plucking, tapping, and sliding fingers built a textured sound-scape. Both men currently live on Bruny Island, off the coast of Tasmania. They travelled to what has become a virtual island state bringing their own rhythmic sense of the ocean, the repetitive motion of tides and waves, of far horizons, a meditative space alive to nature’s nuances.

Scott Tinkler performing solo at the WA Museum for the 2021 Perth International Jazz Festival (photograph by Ewa Ginal Cumblidge)

Next day, under the skeleton of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling of what was once part of the WA State Library, Tinkler performed solo. The audience was rapt. Listening to Tinkler, I fantasised that this was how an underwater world might sound: the grand bellowing of gigantic beasts; the cries of predator and prey. Bent close to a cymbal, Tinkler multiplied and recycled sonic vibrations, creating an extraordinarily pure, high note that dissipated slowly, tantalising to the ear. Later, he played into a metal bowl, his buried trumpet singing a siren song, a whale song, or imitating a diver’s escaping air bubbles. Tinkler’s diaphragm seems to expand and contract without pause. His silences, when they come, serve as punctuation to a cascade of notes and, finally, a full stop.

The other two acoustic performances in Hackett Hall were equally impressive. Ghost Gum Reverb, an avant-garde improvisatory group comprised of Josten Myburgh on alto sax, Djuna Lee on double bass, Jameson Feakes on electric guitar, and Ben Greene on drums, gave a hypnotic performance. Lee’s bowing provided a resonant underlayer over which the others interacted. From ambient sounds to frenetic deluges, these musicians’ ability to listen and respond to minute variations in tempo and mood is extraordinary. As shadows flitted over the whale’s skeleton seemingly in time with the music, Greene’s soft felt mallets brushed across the drums and lifted for a moment. We waited, listening for the almost inaudible quiver that would signal the end.

An hour later, Djuna Lee performed again, this time with saxophonist Simon Charles. Their hour-long exploration was a meeting of composition and improvisation, structure and spontaneity, which expanded on their collaborations begun at Audible Edge Festival earlier this year. The image of Charles standing on one leg, like a Hindu deity or yogi, exemplifies the duo’s balance and precision. With the bell of his saxophone muted on the calf of his crossed leg and Lee’s double bass sending out a message of sonorous accord, this concert will stay with me.

By complete contrast, the last concert of the festival featured Grievous Bodily Calm, a band that fuses jazz improvisation, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), beat music, and contemporary electronica. Every moment, from Matthew McGlynn’s trumpet wailing over the beats provided by Alex Reid’s frenetic drumming, Josiah Padmanabham’s soaring electronic keyboards, Zac Grafton’s bass, and Edo Ekic’s guitar, provoked an enthusiastic response from the dancing, swaying audience. What a stunning finish to a fabulous weekend.

‘Come play!’ was PIJF’s catchcry this year. We came, we played, each according to their own predilections. We might miss the excitement of overseas visitors, but here in Perth we have been privileged to see musicians of international calibre perform live.

The 2021 Perth International Jazz Festival runs from 5 to 7 November.