BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Sam McAuliffe may be the freshest muso on the Hobart scene. He kicked off 2017 with a move to the island capital, having emerged from the improvisational jazz scene of Melbourne.
The guitarist is set to perform his first local gig, teaming up with his trio Through a Glass Darkly. They’ll launch their debut album Oneiric as part of the Jazz at MONA series this month.
You’ve just moved from Melbourne, where you studied music at Monash University. Where did you perform during your student days?
The only gigs we could get as young aspiring jazz musicians were at corporate events and weddings and business venues. We couldn’t play original music – we had to play jazz standards. I got really frustrated about not being able to get a gig where you could actually play music we wanted to play. So my friend Travis Woods and I started the Melbourne Improvisers Collective in about 2011.
We hosted jazz events at night. We got to hear each other play, and that took off. It was one of the only establishments where you could see a few bands in a night. I later started The Re-think Project in about 2013, and we operated out of Uptown Jazz Café. That was a free improvisation gig, as opposed to jazz. It was a good way for me to be able to present my compositions.
So how would you describe the Sam McAuliffe sound?
I’ve tried so many different things, trying to find what is me. We have this discussion all the time, as jazz musicians: what to define ourselves as. Most of the time, we can’t. We just say we improvise.
It was at the end of my second year at university, when we were running the Melbourne Improvisers Collective, that we booked a group with the guitarist Ren Walters. He came and performed – I had no idea what was going on, and it blew my mind. He became my guitar teacher for the next however-many years. That was when I started getting into pure improvised music instead of jazz.
What aesthetics do you draw into your music?
I’m a pretty mellow sort of person, so I think my music is less aggressive. I’d call it textural, which I think reflects who I am. When I listen to music, I’m more interested in listening to the textures and layers of sound – just sound – rather than the melody.
Tell us how your new album Oneiric explores those textures.
I’d just come out of my Master of Arts (Music Performance) research project, investigating how environmental sounds can form improvisation. The whole point was to break down melody and have it incidental: background sound. It is very dreamlike. One of the [tracks] is We Are Where We Are Not – obviously, in our bed, asleep; but in our dreams, somewhere else.
Will you perform the music on the album, or improvise new sounds at the launch?
It’s all improvised, so we’ll be playing in the style of the album. There are a lot of effects, and ‘prepared’ guitar in the same way that John Cage prepared the piano. It’s almost more percussive with the preparations, but then the effects make it dreamy. The point of this group is almost to make the guitar sound as least like the guitar as possible.
Sam McAuliffe will launch Oneiric, the debut album of his trio Through a Glass Darkly featuring Tony Hicks (woodwinds) and Mark Shepherd (bass and synth), as part of the Jazz at MONA series, 1-4pm July 9 in The Void. Follow Sam on Facebook.
This article featured in Warp Magazine, June 2017.
Image supplied.
