NOMINATION: Work of the Year - Jazz
For an original Jazz work of any instrumentation, including improvisatory composition.
A work is defined as a single complete musical composition, or expression. This includes music with movements or sub-works (i.e. song cycles), installations, and real-time compositions (improvised music).
If you believe your work to be nominated in the wrong category or the details of your nomination to be incorrect, please contact the AMC via email at awards@australianmusiccentre.com.au before proceeding with the nomination.
Art Music Award guidelines →
Nominee
Ross McHenry
Title of the work
Love and Obscurity
Performer
Ross McHenry, Eric Harland, Donny McCaslin, Adam OFarrill, Ben Monder and Matthew Sheens
Performance Date
13/9/2024
Venue
Waves
Nominator Statement
Ross McHenry is a restless collaborator and forward-thinking composer whose work has been consistently recognised both in Australia and internationally for its innovative character, curatorial flair and astute musicianship.
In 2024 Ross released Waves - an ambitious new album project and deeply personal exploration of memory, history, and the impact of seismic personal and existential events - through a new collaboration with Earshift Music.
Waves stands as a poignant love letter to the landscapes and relationships that shape our stories. Recorded at the Bunker Studios in New York, the album features an impressive roster of musicians of US and Australian artists, including Eric Harland, Ben Monder, Donny McCaslin, Adam OFarrill, and Matthew Sheens, lifting McHenry's celebrated compositional voice to unprecedented heights.
From Waves, I am nominating the composition Love and Obscurity. This work captures Ross unique capacity to capture emotional depth through the composition and recording process. Much of the work cedes space to the improvisations of others whilst never losing the character of the thematic material and in particular the emotional integrity and arc of the work as a compositional whole. Whilst appearing simple, this majestic big picture speaks to the power and importance of instrumental improvised music to reach beyond technical mastery and connect us to our own embodied experience.
This depth is represented by the critical reception and praise the album has received:
A pleasure from start to finish (...) ceaselessly Imaginative (), an inveterate explorer
RHYTHMS MAGAZINE
Packed with unpredictable forms, formats, rhythms and moods yields surprises at each listening
ALL ABOUT JAZZ
McHenry is an artist with a powerful vision
STEREOPHILE
Formidable, agile, and ever-imaginative
TEXTURA
A rare symbiosis of boundary-pushing experimentation, stop-on-a-dime collaboration, dense harmonics and lamenting melodies all adding up to the kind of textural soundscape that lingers in the brain long after silence ensues () It took him five albums but McHenry now has his masterpiece
GOLDMINE MAGAZINE
Until recently based in Adelaide, Ross has worked consistently to connect South Australian artists with the broader national and international conversation, forging a path for forward thinking collaborations with many leading artists.
Love and Obscurity represents an important step forward in the development of his ongoing body of work and his unique positioning as a leading Australian compositional voice.
Nominee
Ross McHenry
Title of the work
Love and Obscurity
Performer
Ross McHenry, Eric Harland, Donny McCaslin, Adam OFarrill, Ben Monder and Matthew Sheens
Performance Date
13/9/2024
Venue
Waves
In 2024 Ross released Waves - an ambitious new album project and deeply personal exploration of memory, history, and the impact of seismic personal and existential events - through a new collaboration with Earshift Music.
Waves stands as a poignant love letter to the landscapes and relationships that shape our stories. Recorded at the Bunker Studios in New York, the album features an impressive roster of musicians of US and Australian artists, including Eric Harland, Ben Monder, Donny McCaslin, Adam OFarrill, and Matthew Sheens, lifting McHenry's celebrated compositional voice to unprecedented heights.
From Waves, I am nominating the composition Love and Obscurity. This work captures Ross unique capacity to capture emotional depth through the composition and recording process. Much of the work cedes space to the improvisations of others whilst never losing the character of the thematic material and in particular the emotional integrity and arc of the work as a compositional whole. Whilst appearing simple, this majestic big picture speaks to the power and importance of instrumental improvised music to reach beyond technical mastery and connect us to our own embodied experience.
This depth is represented by the critical reception and praise the album has received:
A pleasure from start to finish (...) ceaselessly Imaginative (), an inveterate explorer
RHYTHMS MAGAZINE
Packed with unpredictable forms, formats, rhythms and moods yields surprises at each listening
ALL ABOUT JAZZ
McHenry is an artist with a powerful vision
STEREOPHILE
Formidable, agile, and ever-imaginative
TEXTURA
A rare symbiosis of boundary-pushing experimentation, stop-on-a-dime collaboration, dense harmonics and lamenting melodies all adding up to the kind of textural soundscape that lingers in the brain long after silence ensues () It took him five albums but McHenry now has his masterpiece
GOLDMINE MAGAZINE
Until recently based in Adelaide, Ross has worked consistently to connect South Australian artists with the broader national and international conversation, forging a path for forward thinking collaborations with many leading artists.
Love and Obscurity represents an important step forward in the development of his ongoing body of work and his unique positioning as a leading Australian compositional voice.