Sources of inspiration, gigs, study...

At around this time I began doing gigs with the well-known Melbourne bandleader Denis Farrington. Most of the musicians were more than twice my age. It was a great learning experience because I played with different musicians of varying talents every night. Meanwhile, at home I was teaching myself jazz piano. I studied the recordings of the great jazz pianists, wrote out their solos, and then duplicated them on my piano. My favourites apart from Oscar were Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. At 16 I fell in love with Now he sings, now he sobs. A lot of people have based their style on the way Chick plays on this record and I don't think anyone has since surpassed him at this sort of playing. It still sounds incredibly modern and fresh 35 years later. I must admit that lately I’ve been attracted to the older pianists. Ahmad Jamal has become a favourite and three years ago I went through a manic Art Tatum period, transcribing his famous Yesterdays performance from The piano starts here 1949 live recording and Willow Weep for me from the Capitol sessions.

If I were to choose the three geniuses of jazz piano, I would cite Art Tatum, Erroll Garner and Bill Evans.

After years of listening to modern players like Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report, Mike Brecker (who, along with Randy actually ended up playing on one of my records) and Miles Davis, I’m having fun discovering all those wonderful swing musicians like Benny Goodman. His pianist, Mel Powel was a fantastic player and no-one talks about him these days. The same with Erroll Garner.

Somehow, because the latter had a certain sense of fun associated with his music making, he’s not taken as seriously as say, Keith Jarrett. It’s like in the movies: they always give the academy award to the actor who plays a tragic figure whereas in actual fact, it’s much harder to play the comic, and I’m not suggesting that Erroll was a clown, of course.

I don’t like preciousness in music and I have no time for the kind of performer who agonisingly screws his face up and contorts his body just to play a C triad. I’m attracted to effortless mastery, whether it be Mohammad Ali, Art Tatum, Sir Donald Bradman (the great Australian cricketer), Frank Sinatra, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli or Fred Astaire. I like difficult things to look easy and not the other way around.