JOHN SANGSTER: THREE NEW ALBUMS Reviewed by Eric Myers ______[This review appeared in the July, 1981 edition of Penthouse magazine]

ith the simultaneous release of a double album and two single albums of original music recently, John Sangster confirms there is W probably no more fertile composer in Australian jazz than himself. The double album, Uttered Nonsense: The Owl and the Pussycat (Rain Forest Records) is the first Sangster work to be released since he completed his monumental jazz suites inspired by the fantasy world of J R R Tolkien — an enormous project which required ten LP records to encompass the composer's flights of imagination. Uttered Nonsense features music accompanying eight nonsense poems written by the 19th Century eccentric Edward Lear and narrated by Ivan Smith, and also various instrumental pieces inspired by Lear.

The great merit of John Sangster's music is that it provides sympathetic contexts for many of the great players in Australian jazz to express themselves freely. There are some 20 musicians on this album, including Bob Barnard (cornet), Bob McIvor (trombone), John McCarthy (clarinet), Graeme Lyall (clarinet and

1 saxophones), Tony Gould (piano), Jim Kelly (guitar) and, of course, Sangster himself, playing vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, swanne-whistle, piano, celeste and percussions. One of the most attractive pieces is the title-track, The Owl and the Pussycat, Lear's best-known work. Ivan Smith's narration is followed by Jim Kelly's improvisation of some beautiful guitar lines over gently played ensemble work. Forced to categorise Sangster's music, one might call it a superior form of dixieland or, as the Sydney musician Michael Kenny once described it, "cosmic dixieland".

Yet Sangster's music clearly transcends the rather limited dixieland idiom, not unlike the way in which Duke Ellington's music always transcended the jazz of the day. The other two albums set out frankly to explore particular moods. The works on Peaceful (Rain Forest) are described by Sangster as "some quiet reflective pieces, little music-poems to do with leaves and water and gentle rain, birds and clouds."

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Meditation (Rain Forest Records) attempts something quite unusual. Flautist Mal Cunningham, who teaches yoga and meditation, has put down a number of improvised tracks over each other, in one tonality only for the duration of the record, accompanied by Sangster and Ian Bloxsom on various percussion instruments.

Flautist Mal Cunningham: improvisations, accompanied by Sangster and Ian Bloxsom on various percussion instruments…PHOTO COURTESY ENCORE MAGAZINE Those who listen to this LP with ordinary ears may find it dreary; it is not so much music as, in Sangster's description, "meditation music — simple sounds for the inner ear".

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