Matt Baker's High 5

Historical article recovered from a Wayback capture dated 2018-02-24.

Jazz Pianist

Matt Baker

has traveled far with his career, performing for audiences all round the globe. In fact in July 2003 and 2004, he performed in Switzerland at the Montreux Jazz Festival with his trio.

In 2003, the trio was selected as the house band, to perform seventeen nights straight in the Montreux Jazz Club. This year they performed each night of the festival in Harry’s New York Bar, and gave a concert in the main jazz venue of the festival, ‘The Casino Barriere’. Matt also represented Australia and gained fifth place in the 2003 Montreux International Solo Jazz Piano competition; an internationally acclaimed competition open to jazz pianists from any corner of the globe, and was a runner up as well in 2004 and 2005.

His music has taken him three times over to the Jazz capital of the world, New York, as well as over to New Zealand for a series of solo and trio performances as well at the Queenstown Jazz Festival. Back home he has performed in Jazz Festivals and concerts all around Australia - Perth, York, Brisbane, Broken Hill, Bundaberg, Lightning Ridge, Gladstone, Noosa, Kiama, Thredbo, Dubbo, Wagga Wagga, York, Sanctuary Cove, Mackay, Darwin, Newcastle, Wollongong, Hamilton, Coonabarabran, Horsham, Orange, The Blue Mountains, Goulburn, Gundagai, Mudgee, Tamworth, Grafton, Ballina, Twin Towns, The Gold Coast, Camden Haven, The Hunter Valley, Manly and Darling Harbour.

In December 2002, Matt returned home from his third trip to New York. He spent a week with Jazz piano legend Oscar Peterson, watching him play every night at the Blue Note, and spent many hours with him between performances talking music, piano, and careers and just becoming good friends.

Matt, a student of New York pianists Benny Green and James Williams, revisited these wonderful players for some more lessons, and in previous trips has also studied casually with Mulgrew Miller, Aaron Goldberg, Eric Reed, Jacky Terrasson, Stephen Scott, Laurence Hobgood, Ralph Sutton, and Ella Fitzgerald’s life-long accompanist Paul Smith.

In Montreux 2004, Matt spent some personal time with jazz legend Herbie Hancock and Cuban pianist Michel Camilo, studying their music, concepts and approaches to modern jazz.

Back home Matt has toured Australia extensively with trumpet virtuoso James Morrison. He has played for Quincy Jones, Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jnr., and has also been the support act for Jazz legends Tony Bennett and Al Jarreau. Since December 2000, Matt is now the resident pianist with Australia’s well-known Jazz band, “Galapagos Duck”, and played in John Morrison’s Swing City from 1999 to 2003.

June 2003 saw the release of Matt’s 2nd album, recorded in December 2002. The album features John Morrison (brother of James) on Drums, and Phil Stack (James Morrison sextet, Thirsty Merc) on Bass. The album showcases the trio, but also features some of Sydney’s top horn players, and some fiery solo piano.

In June 2006, Matt released his 3rd album, “From an afternoon with the Mountains”. The album features two new young up and coming giants, Alex Boneham and Ko Omura. Sydney percussionist Akyho Akhrif joins the trio for the project too. On the album, the group explores a completely new original sound with Cuban, Brazilian, Classical and Jazz influences.

1. BOBBY McFERRIN - Montreux Jazz Festival, 2004

The first gig that comes to mind was at the time something I’d never seen or heard before. His rendition of Ave Maria was totally solo voice, singing the accompaniment, the broken 10th arpeggios for the whole song, and got the audience to sing the melody above - it was so moving.

2. HERBIE HANCOCK ‘GERSHWIN’S WORLD’ – Blue Note NYC 2000

Sitting in the front row, the tension was building up in a ‘slow groove’ arrangement of ‘Ain’t Necessarily So’, and Herbie kept hinting at these burning lines, not double time, just a totally different new burning tempo - the band wouldn’t go with him but he kept jabbing at it - the musicians then hinted at going there for a split second - 2 notes - and then finally after steam was shooting out of everyone’s ears in suspense, it burst out into a burning version of ‘Cotton Tail’… my eyes filled with tears…!

3. OSCAR PETERSON – Blue Note NYC 2002

Another memorable one was my time again in New York in 2002, where I went over to see Oscar Peterson at the Blue Note Jazz Club, for a week. On the last night they started off ‘Satin Doll’, which they played every night, and then after a few bars, a trumpet was heard from the audience, improvising, fast and in another key… The trio stopped - it was an old friend of Oscars, Clark Terry. There were gasps in the air and the room fell to silence as Clark, sitting at his table, kept the line of quavers going… After 20 seconds, the trio joined in and exploded into the number Clark had begun – ‘Mack the Knife’… - ‘featuring’ Clark Terry!

4. ARTURO SANDOVAL

A really great concert that comes to mind was Arturo Sandoval and his band. I had never seen him before - amazing Cuban grooves, (a monstrous pianist with him too), and Arturo played amazing Cuban piano too, and he sang, and scatted just like his trumpet, and he played his horn like I’ve ‘never’ heard a trumpet before…It was funny, at the workshop he gave during the day, a young trumpet student asked the question as to whether his horn (the students) was decent or crappy, as he could never get a good sound out of it… Arturo took the horn and said ‘listen!’… It’s not the horn, it’s you. How you make the sound all comes from down here, touching his stomach. He blew a super loud, long, high note out of his own horn and then swapped to the students horn, and blew the exact same note - both sounded identical! - The audience broke into hysterics!

5. GALAPAGOS DUCK – Wagga Wagga Jazz Festival

The last gig I’d like to share with you is exciting but a terrifying experience I had with Galapagos Duck at the Wagga Jazz Fest. We were inside the main concert hall, Rodney was out the front intro’ing a song, and I was noodling on the keyboard, giving him his opening chords. Suddenly a big black spider the size of a funnel-web (and probably was one!) dropped from the roof above and landed smack on middle C, right between my hands… Now let’s put the replay in slow motion… The spider hits the keyboard, I look down and see it, I launched backwards like there were rockets on my shoes, screaming at the top of my voice… ” FFFF %%%% #### @@@@ !!! ”, Rodney turned around to see what happened, the spider as soon as it landed ran to the front of the keyboard and pounced on the floor, and with one dive Rodney leaped back and came down on the spider in one quick move … Turning his foot from side to side, making sure it was completely dead… I apologised to the audience for my obscenities…