Des Cowley

'Melbourne International Jazz Festival: The state of jazz in Australia' by Des Cowley

ABR Arts • 25 October 2022

The pandemic was always destined to cast a long shadow, leaving promoters and festivals twitchy when it came to long-term planning. The Melbourne International Jazz Festival (MIJF), like so many other events, swallowed a bitter pill in 2021, as the city went into its sixth lockdown just weeks out, scuttling months of preparation. A quick scramble saw a scaled-back, hastily assembled program of exc ... (read more)

‘A New Poetry Imprint: Life Before Man’ by Des Cowley

Book Talk • 16 February 2022

Life Before Man (LBM), the poetry imprint of Gazebo Books, was founded by artist and publisher Phil Day in 2020. To date, seven books have been published, including works by Subhash Jaireth, Cassandra Atherton, Anthony Lawrence, Gary Catalano, and Alex Selenitsch. Forthcoming is a substantial international anthology of prose poetry, titled Alcatraz. The books in the series strive for a recognisab ... (read more)

The 2021 Melbourne International Jazz Festival

ABR Arts • 07 December 2021

It was never going to be a normal Melbourne International Jazz Festival. After all, there was nothing normal about the past two years. Having been forced to cancel in 2020, the festival made the decision to shift the 2021 event from its usual June timeslot to mid-October, perhaps hoping the extra few months might make a difference. The program was duly issued, tickets both offered and sold. Clearl ... (read more)

Des Cowley reviews 'The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry' edited by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington

December 2020, no. 427 • 25 November 2020

What is it about English language poetry that has proved so resistant to the lure of the prose poem? The French, it appears, held no such qualms, finding themselves besotted with the form ever since Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire began dispensing with line breaks and stanzas. Of course, the very existence of English-language works like Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914) or William ... (read more)

Leaf and Shadow (Australian Art Orchestra)

ABR Arts • 24 September 2019

This year the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. Originally conceived as a jazz ensemble, it has developed – first under the visionary leadership of founder Paul Grabowsky, and now under artistic director Peter Knight – into one of the country’s leading new music ensembles. Leaf and Shadow inaugurates the AAO’s Meeting Point Series 2019–20, a cycle o ... (read more)

2019 Melbourne International Jazz Festival

ABR Arts • 12 June 2019

In 1959, Miles Davis entered Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York, with his sextet, and recorded what many consider to be the greatest jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue. It was an inspired idea to program a performance of this music, in celebration of the album’s sixtieth anniversary, at the twenty-second Melbourne International Jazz Festival (MIJF). And yet, it begged the question: ho ... (read more)

The 2019 Stonnington Jazz Festival

ABR Arts • 21 May 2019

It was a bold move by Stonnington Jazz to program an all-female/non-binary performance for the Festival’s opening concert: War Cry. Jazz, like much else, has come in for its fair share of criticism in the #MeToo era, its historical icons – bar a few exceptions – made up mostly of male musicians. The issue was highlighted during the recent International Jazz Day Global Concert held in Melbour ... (read more)

Cold War

ABR Arts • 20 December 2018

Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War picked up a slew of prizes at the recent European Film Awards, and is already being talked about as a major contender for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a prize he won with his previous film, Ida (2015). The Cold War from which the film takes its title lasted the best part of half a century and impacted upon the lives of ... (read more)

2018 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues

ABR Arts • 12 November 2018

Now in its twenty-ninth year, the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues continues to deliver programming that is innovative, ambitious, and far-reaching. That a long-running Festival of this scale and significance takes place annually in a regional Victorian city says much about the tenacity and dedication of the Festival’s artistic team, its board, its many volunteers and supporters, and the ge ... (read more)

Kites of Tianjin (fortyfivedownstairs)

ABR Arts • 01 August 2018

The Kites of Tianjin was the fifth and final set of performances by composer and multi-instrumentalist Adam Simmons in his series The Usefulness of Art, inaugurated back in March 2017 with Concerto for Piano and Toy Band. It has proven to be an ambitious cycle, with each concert unveiling a recent or newly composed work, written specifically for a large ensemble. In composing these new works, Sim ... (read more)