Peter Knight's High 5

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

Peter Knight is a Melbourne based trumpeter and composer well known for the eclecticism of his musical output. He is a highly regarded jazz performer and has toured extensively with his

quartet

whose second album, All the Gravitation of Silence, was released on the Jazzhead label in 2006. In addition to his quartet, Peter also leads the

5+2 Brass Ensemble

(Invisible Cities and Other Works Rufus Records 2005) and the acclaimed cross-cultural ensemble

Way Out West

, which released Footscray Station on Newmarket in 2003 and and launched it’s latest album ‘Old Grooves for New Streets’ in September 2007. Read our review of

Old Grooves

Peter has recorded and performed with Australian and international artists including: Erik Griswold’s Wide Alley (Australian/Chinese collaboration premiered at 2007 Brisbane Music Festival), Adrian Sherriff’s Oynsemble, Hugh Fraser Quintet (Canada), Quinsin Nachoff (Canada), Nigel McLean, Misinterprotato, Allan Browne, Ren Walters’ This Ensemble, Stephen Magnusson, and rock groups including The Violent Femmes, Spiderbait and You Am I. Peter has also composed for theatre, short films and created sound installations, and recently composed a chamber work for Dead Horse String and Wind Ensemble. Peter is also the co-artistic director of sound-art company, Double Venturi, which presented The Current at the Melbourne Town Hall in 2006.

1. STEPHEN GRANT’S HOT NEW ORLEANS FIVE - Fountain Inn Port Melbourne many Fridays in 1991

Stephen Grant is one of my most important inspirations and one of the most incredible musicians I have ever heard. He had a residency at this little pub in Port Melbourne every Friday night, I used to go whenever I could as did a lot of other musicians at the time. It was an awesome swinging, burning band… hardcore New Orleans music… Stevie on cornet or trumpet, Karl Hird on clarinet, Allan Browne on kit, Andy Baylor on acoustic guitar and Howard Cairns on gut string bass. I’m still yet to hear anything much better than Steve’s cornet playing in that band, he just had everything going on on the horn: unbelievable tone, range, the hardest swing time, and just a constant wellspring of melodic invention that at times used to just leave me feeling quite overwhelmed, sometimes it made me want to go home and just practice practice, practice, and sometimes give up… lucky the former won out. Steve doesn’t really play so much jazz on the trumpet these days. I haven’t heard him for years but he plays accordion in Julien Wilson’s trio… he can play almost any instrument to quite an astonishing level.

2. DAVE DOUGLAS WITH NEW AND USED - Knitting Factory NYC 4th June 1996

This gig really totally blew me away, it was like nothing I’d ever heard, it was the first time I’d heard Dave Douglas and I still think this is one of his best line-ups: Mark Feldman on violin, Andy Laster reeds and Tom Rainey I think, can’t remember who was on bass. What I really loved about this gig was the way the music moved from totally improvised free chaos/noise/energy to the most detailed and delicately rendered composed material. It’s a hallmark of a lot of Douglas’ output and it sounds quite familiar now but in 1996 I hadn’t come across that approach before, it was my first time in New York, I had only been there a couple of days and then I wound up at the Knitting Factory listening to this stuff just thinking what the f**k!?

3. THE NECKS - Wangaratta Jazz Festival 2002 (I think)

The Necks are one of my favourite groups, I have heard heaps of their gigs but this one was a standout. The performance was in the little church that is one of the best venues at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival, the acoustics are just gorgeous and it was great hearing The Necks play without amplification. They are so amazing in that they have taken the piano trio and created something quite new with one of the most well worn formats in jazz/improvised music. This concert was hallucinatory (can you aurally hallucinate?) well anyway they managed to create the illusion of instruments that weren’t there… sounds that developed out of the harmonics and partials created by the piano and the bass fundamentals and shimmer of Tony Buck’s cymbals… at one point I was sure I could hear a cello weaving a counterpoint… It was one of those gigs where at the end people take a while to start to applaud because the music has taken them so deep that it’s a moment or two before they emerge.

4. MILES DAVIS - Melbourne Concert Hall 1988

I’ll never forget that concert, I was really young and totally obsessed with Miles, in fact Miles was just about all I was listening to at the time. I had tickets to the second of his two nights in Melbourne but me and a friend decided to see if we could get in to hear the first night as well. We went to the Concert Hall and got someone else to bring a couple of ticket stubs out to us. Once we got past the ushers and into the auditorium (which was completely full) we snuck down and sat on the floor in front of the front row. Soon after the lights went down and as Miles came onto the stage other people jumped from their seats and came up to the front of the stage, so we were able to stand up with them and stay there for the whole concert. It was a great night, the buzz of getting in and just of seeing Miles, but the music itself was incredible too… great band and he still had that sound… I’ll never forget hearing him start a piece just with the trumpet alone and I was standing just a few meters away, it’s always different actually hearing and seeing someone play as opposed to just listening to recordings/seeing footage.

5. ELLIOT CARTER BRASS QUINTET - Melbourne International Brass Festival 2003

This quintet was formed by the phenomenal young trumpeter, Tristram Williams, specifically to play Elliot Carter’s Brass Quintet. I hadn’t heard much of Carter’s music before this concert apart from some of his string music, but his writing for brass is incredible. At the time I was trying to write my own music for the 5+2 Brass Ensemble and this piece just did my head in, his approach sounds like nothing else. It’s ‘hard’ listening but it’s also quite beautiful and, I thought, at times quite funny (humorous as distinct from comic). The ensemble put a great amount of time into rehearsing the work and they played the crap out of what must rank as one of the more challenging works in the repertoire. Tristram’s command of his instrument and of the ensemble made a real impression on me too, he’s got ‘the sound’… he fills the room even when he’s playing pianissimo and he’s all over the horn. We’ve since become good friends and have spent a bit of time practicing together, I’ve learnt a lot from him.