Elements (2020)
Steve Barry & Judy Bailey
“Bailey & Barry’s exchanges are as organic as verbal conversations between two erudite friends...you hear the delight in expanding each other’s options. ”
Recorded live in a one-set, entirely improvised concert at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in August 2018, Elements encapsulates the humour, vitality, and intuitive, empathetic communication and creative spirit of a now-longstanding musical partnership. Since a debut duo performance in 2011 following Barry’s undergraduate studies with Bailey in the Conservatorium’s jazz program, annual revisitings in concert have seen the emergence of a unique improvisatory telepathy both in the moment-to-moment musical choices and the broader arcs of each set.
Originally conceived as a reflection of the five ancient eastern elements (in Japanese philosophy, earth, water, fire, wind and void), Elements paints a vivid, mystical picture full of cheeky Goblin dances, explosive volcanic activity, poignant meditations, curious amblings, and references to Maori mythology and the Maori god of shimmering air that speaks to Bailey and Barry’s shared New Zealand heritage.
Judy Bailey (OAM) is one of Australia’s most prominent jazz musicians and educators, and a founding faculty member in the jazz studies program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was inducted into the Australian Bell Awards Jazz Hall of Fame in 2014.
Hatch (2018)
“Hatch boldly announces a new direction...it is an outstanding collection from one of Australia’s most inventive and accomplished composer/improvisers.”
Hatch is a collection of 19 solo piano works that explores the broad yet fluid spectrum between composed and improvised, and which formed a major component of Barry’s PhD portfolio. The music reflects influences from a diverse milieu of piano music and in which Barry has found inspiration as a composer and improviser; echoes of Bach, Debussy, Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Elliot Carter can be heard alongside freely improvised extrapolations of the notated scores.
Hatch was released through the New Zealand-based contemporary music label Rattle Records, and reached #9 on the RNZ Classical Charts in July 2018.