The James Valentine Quartet comprises James on saxophone, Gary Daley on keyboards, Peter Kohlhoff on bass and Cameron Reid on drums. The Quartet takes classic Australian pub rock songs and turns them into wonderfully evocative jazz arrangements.
These have been captured on their latest recordings, The Power and the Passion.
You can hear them right now by clicking on LISTEN NOW on the left of this screen.
These are the Australian tunes from what we can now see was a classic era of Australian songwriting. When there was a rock band in every pub, when Australian radio pumped out the hits, when Countdown was on every Sunday night, Australians heard songs everywhere about their own life and experience.
Jazz players have always explored whatever music is around. But there was never much connection between the Australian jazz world and the world of Midnight Oil, Divinyls, Cold Chisel and Hunters and Collectors. So I wanted to see what might happen when a jazz quartet had a go at some of these. Here is that very quartet in the act of having a go...
I haven't tried to overdo the tricky harmony, get over smart with the rhythms, just play the tune, have a blow on it, and remember a time when these great bands ruled the nation.
Here we are going for it at the Camelot Lounge in Sydney.