The breadth Spence elicits from his single instrument is striking, informed by decades of work as a jazz and avant-garde pianist and improviser, as well as years of experience as a composer for orchestra, film, and theater. The 23 discrete improvised pieces on Whirlpool (July 24, 2020, Alister Spence Music) make use of the entire piano, inside and out. Employing an orchestral palette of timbres and a highly developed repertoire of piano techniques, Spence embarks on a breathtaking exploratory journey.
Whirlpool was recorded and mixed by Tim Whitten in the fall of 2019 at Studio 301 in Sydney, and mastered by Doug Henderson at micro-moose-berlin in Berlin. With no preparation aside from practicing particular techniques, Spence sat down at the piano. “In the session,” he says, “I tried to create surprises for myself – starting somewhere without a clear idea of what that would sound like and, as a result, creating puzzles or mazes which I try to follow or not to follow.” These sonic trajectories, informed by Spence’s fearless creativity and executed with his clear, sensitive pianistic touch, invite listeners to experience the piano in new ways.
The seven-minute opening track, “(re)new,” begins with dark, dreamy bass octaves which break off into thoughtful, winding note patterns. The piece builds in intensity and dissonance, evolving into frenetic, vibrating pillars of sound before receding back into peacefulness. The searching, sprightly “(back)water” and the haunting “(un)seen” follow, along with “(dis)similarity” which takes full advantage of Spence’s prepared piano skills, teeming with twangy, resonant tapping, plucking, and strumming sounds. On tracks like “(inter)relate” and “(some)where,” Spence shows his deep sense for rhythm, with dancelike cadences and ringing, bell-like cascades of notes.
While Spence is firmly ensconced in a modern sensibility, his music is almost Romantic in its strong sense of lyricism, emotion, and nature. “(en)folded” begins with a sound like a distant horn, or a storm gathering in the distance. Other voices join the drone, evoking the ethereal, mysterious patter of the natural world. On “(over)taken,” which opens the second disc, we hear notes rolling into each other in swift clusters, like nimble creatures running on rolling hills. The thick, dense “(under)standing” is, at 8:17, the recording’s longest track. With its virtuosic movement of constantly shifting tremolo chords evolving into arpeggiated harmonies and finally resolving to a slow, simple, single line, the piece is a triumphant tour de force of harmony, timbre, and rhythm. The album closes with “(fore)see,” which begins with gentle, barely discernible buzzing and jingling. Other sounds join a building interplay before the mass dissolves into an echoey quiet, a silence that implies a continuation of sound, resonating long after the track is through.
Like the swirling, spiny tropical plants and the roiling water pictured on the inside and outside of the album’s cover, Spence’s Whirlpool is at once peaceful and urgent, overflowing with life, beauty, and glorious, unexpected, surprising music.
Pianist, improviser, and composer Alister Spence has established a reputation as a pre-eminent creative force in jazz and improvised music in his native Australia and beyond. With a performing and composing career spanning more than 25 years, he has performed with and composed for some of the world’s most respected artists in contemporary music, improvisation, film, and theater. Recordings by his longstanding trio with Lloyd Swanton and Toby Hall are regularly named in best of the year jazz roundups. Their 2015 live release was nominated for an Australian Jazz Bell Award and Art Music Award Excellence in Jazz. Spence also performs with the improvising group Sensaround and has creative collaborative relationships with internationally recognized improvisers, including acclaimed Japanese pianist and composer Satoko Fujii. He is a founding member of Kira Kira with Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, which first performed at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival in 2017. Spence has also performed with the Satoko Fujii Orchestras, and teamed up with her Orchestra Kobe to record Imagine Meeting You Here, Spence’s five-part composition for improvising orchestra released in 2019. Other projects include an improvised duo recording with Scottish saxophonist Raymond MacDonald (the 2018 Sound Hotel) and
US pianist Myra Melford (the 2014 Everything Here Is Possible). The latter release won the APRA/AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Jazz.
From 1990-2005, Spence was co-leader and composer for the internationally acclaimed group Clarion Fracture Zone. He is a founding member of Wanderlust and a longstanding member of The Australian Art Orchestra. His colleagues over the years have included Michiyo Yagi, Mark Helias, Andy Sheppard, Barre Phillips, Joe Williamson, Jim O’Rourke, Karraikudi Mani, Bernie McGann, Sandy Evans, Chris Abrahams, Don Burrows, Dale Barlow, Peter O’Mara, Phillip Slater, Paul Capsis, Archie Roach, and Ed Kuepper. Spence has toured extensively in Europe, Asia, and Canada, and has performed radio broadcasts for ABC (Australia), BBC (UK), and WDR (Germany). His playing is featured on more than forty recordings, many of which have either won or been nominated for Australian Record Industry (ARIA) Awards. As a composer, he has been commissioned to write for the Australian Art Orchestra and the Claire Edwardes/Amy Dixon Duo. He has composed soundtracks for several films, and his work for Ivan Sen’s “Beneath Clouds” was nominated for Best Score at the Film Critics Awards and the Australian Film Industry Awards. He has provided sound design for theatrical productions including “Angela’s Kitchen,” “Winterreise, A Winter’s Journey,” and “I Love Todd Sampson.” Spence holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from University of NSW, where he is Lecturer in Music.
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