Contributors & Editors | extempore Australia

Click names in the list below to see a mini-bio for our wonderful contributors and editors in Issue 1

Matthew Asprey is a writer from Sydney. In 2004 he hosted a weekly jazz program on Gosford community radio, and has reviewed festivals, albums, and Sydney gigs for the Jazz Australia website. He recently completed a comic novel, Lewis is Robbed, which has been excerpted in Island; other short stories have appeared there and in various publications such as Total Cardboard. He teaches creative writing at Macquarie University and blogs at http://matthewasprey.wordpress.com

Matthew won 2nd prize in this year’s National Jazz Writing Competition!

Jo Blair developed a keen interest in photography whilst growing up in Cape Town, South Africa. Now based in Melbourne, Jo is transitioning hobby to profession through study and has already completed a number of projects including a unique Melbourne Street Art Calendar, weddings and individual shoots for writers, hairstylists, models and family portraiture. As extempore goes to print, Jo will be on an internship in her home country spending time with her family when she is not behind her camera. She plans to return to Melbourne as a full time freelance photographer.

Melbourne based Natasha Blankfield has been photographing icons and events worldwide since 1999. She has developed her craftsmanship through extensive field experience, and acquired a specific passion for jazz singing and live music – both from a performance and photographic perspective. She says a highlight of the Stonnington Jazz Festival was being able to capture the essence of her subjects within the mood and context of this unique environment. She has had work published in The Age, Beat and Inpress to name a few. Natasha has had a number of solo and group exhibitions and is preparing her next show.

Born in 1944, Allan Browne was a founding member of the Red Onions, touring Europe twice in the ‘60s. Originally self taught, Allan studied contemporary percussion in the ‘70s, forming Onaje in 1978. He spent 20 years in Paul Grabowsky’s double ARIA award-winning trio with Gary Costello from 1980 and accompanied over 40 international soloists including Milt Jackson, Phil Woods, Johnnie Griffin and Mal Waldron. Currently working with Shannon Barnett, Jex Saarelaht, Mark Hannaford, Sam Anning and his own quintet and jazz band, he has made over 100 commercial recordings. Since 2000, Allan has won three Australian Jazz [Bell] Awards and the Don Banks Fellowship.

John Clare was born at Maroubra Bay in 1940. He has written on diverse topics for most major Australian publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The National Times and Nation Review, as well as Town and Queen magazines in England. Poetry has appeared in Poetry Australia and New Poetry and has been read on the ABC’s old Quality Street programme. He has published three books: Bodgie Dada: Australian Jazz Since 1946 (Queensland University Press), Low Rent (Text) and Why Wangaratta? – Ten Years Of The Wangaratta Festival Of Jazz (published by the Festival and the Victorian Tourist Bureau). John currently reviews books for the Sun-Herald & writes essays & reviews for SIMA.org.au

PS Cottier is a Canberra-based poet. She has worked as a union organiser, a lawyer, a university tutor and a tea-lady. Her father is a long term jazz fan and she is re-discovering this music. After writing a PhD on Charles Dickens she finds herself particularly attracted to short stories and even shorter poems. She is now able to write full time, and tries to do so. Her poetry has appeared in publications including Eureka Streetand The Canberra Times. Her first collection of poetry, The Glass Violin, will be published shortly by Ginninderra Press.

Sascha Feinstein won the Hayden Carruth Award for his poetry collection Misterioso. His other books include Ask Me Now: Conversations on Jazz & Literature; Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present; and The Jazz Poetry Anthology, Vols. I & II (edited with Yusef Komunyakaa). His work has appears in such publications as The American Poetry Review, Poets Against the War, and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. His forthcoming books include Black Pearls: Improvisations on a Lost Year and The Jazz Fiction Anthology. He is Professor at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania (USA) and founding editor of Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature.

Tony Gorman‘s 35 year professional career as a saxophonist, clarinettist, composer and producer has made him one of the most respected musicians in Australia where he emigrated from Scotland in 1988. Tony is well-known as co-leader of Clarion Fracture Zone and GEST8. He played with the AAO, The Ottos, MARA! and Chelate Compound. Tony’s life changed dramatically when he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1997. Since then he has been concentrating on meditative clarinet performances with tabla player Bobby Singh. Tony has won many awards for his work including three ARIA awards.

Lynn Hard was born in Texas in 1938 but grew up in Los Angeles. He got excited about jazz and poetry at about the same time (1950/51). He came to Australia in 1977 where he worked as an academic librarian until his retirement in 1968. He has had two books of poetry published and done a great many readings. He currently lives in Sydney where he is producing a jazz CD.

Andrew W. Hurley holds a degree in Law and a PhD in German Cultural Studies (University of Melbourne). His book Jazz Returns, examining the reception of jazz and world music in Germany since WWII will be published by Berghahn Books in 2009. He has also published on German and Australian cinema and is currently working on an ARC-funded project on representations of music in recent German literature and film. He is a lecturer in German Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Adrian Jackson was the jazz critic for The Age from 1978-2000. He has written for numerous other publications, including Jazz Down Under, Australasian Jazz, Down Beat and The Wire, and continues to write for Rhythms and Limelight. He has been artistic director for the Wangaratta Festival Of Jazz since 1990, and for Stonnington Jazz since 2006, and was also artistic director for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival from 1998-2004.

Journalist and broadcaster Peter Jordan has written on music for a number of publications, including The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, The Wire and Jazz and Blues Magazine. He has reported on music for ABC Radio National’s Arts Today and his documentary on Graeme Bell’s groundbreaking post-war trip to Europe, A Walk in Wenceslas Square, went to air on RN’s social history programme Hindsight in 1996. He was a founding member of the Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA) and has served in various capacities on its executive committee. Peter is currently editor of the Jazz Australia website. He lives in Sydney.

Since February 2006, Gerry Koster has produced and presented ABC Classic FM’s Friday night jazz program, Jazz Up Late. He has been involved with the Australian jazz scene for 20 years, beginning as a volunteer in 1988 at one of the nation’s largest community radio stations, Melbourne’s PBS 106.7FM, producing and presenting the weekly jazz program Dizzy Atmosphere and assuming the role of Jazz Coordinator. For seven years, Gerry was the Manager of the independent Australian jazz record label, Newmarket Music. Gerry’s appreciation of jazz and improvised music has also made its way into the liner notes of a number of Australian jazz CDs.

Spike Mason spends a large portion of his time telling stories. He does this with either improvised music or words, and has come to believe that the two activities are on a similar path. He also spends time reading autobiographies, and has discovered that it is often what a writer has left out of a story that prompts the most thought. He resides with his wife and three girls on a piece of land near the peaceful Shoalhaven River, where he tries to live simply and grow all his own food. Spike is on the web at www.spikemason.com

Spike won 3rd prize in this year’s National Jazz Writing Competition!

Andrew McDonald’s family was living in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s. He discovered jazz in company with friends, listening at the same time to Stravinsky, Bartok, the serialists, American concert music and much else. He began writing poetry at about the same time, though that is probably a coincidence. For many years he worked as an editor and producer in the subtitling section of SBS television, and was involved with the Sydney poetry scene. His books are Absence in Strange Countries and The One True History. He lives in Canberra now, working as an editor and also as a counsellor.

Vyvyan Mishra (Consulting Editor) has been a professional writer and editor for 30 years. Her ‘regular day jobs’ began with a traineeship at the English Woman’s Weekly magazine and have included a short stint at Lonely Planet and a longer, voluntary position as Assistant Publications Officer at the National Publishing House of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, located in the Himalyas. Vyvyan is the author of an oral history, Children of Tibet (NSW: Pearlfisher Publications, 1994). She is currently employed part-time as an Editor at Melbourne University and also runs a freelance editing and writing business.

Peter Newall lives and works in Sydney, where he was born. In the northern winter he travels by train through the border cities of central and eastern Europe, where he sits in jazz clubs and regrets the loss of the Habsburg empire. He speaks halting French and German, and plays the double bass poorly. His favourite musicians are Tomasz Stańko and Glenn Gould; he reads and re-reads everything written by Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Roth and Thomas Bernhard. Like everyone else, he wrote poetry at school, but this is his first published short story.

Peter won 1st prize in this year’s National Jazz Writing Competition!

Geoff Page, Contributing Consulting Editor (Poetry) is an Australian poet who has published eighteen collections of poetry as well as two novels, four verse novels and several other works including anthologies, translations and a biography of the jazz musician, Bernie McGann. He has won the ACT Poetry Award, the Grace Leven Prize, the Queensland Premier’s Prize for Poetry, the Christopher Brennan Award and the 2001 Patrick White Literary Award and his poetry has been translated into six languages. Geoff is also an amateur musician (vibraphone) and has followed jazz in detail since 1956. His most recent poetry collections are: Agnostic Skies (Five Islands Press) and Seriatim (Salt, UK).

Mark Peterson was born in Mumbai, India and migrated with family to Australia in the mid 80’s. Pursuing photography since 2002, and professionally since 2006 he has developed an interest in photographing people in music and fashion. Mark’s passion for jazz & photography coincided when he was given the opportunity to shoot the 2008 Melbourne Jazz Fringe, Melbourne Jazz and Stonnington Jazz festivals for Jazz Australia (www.jazz.org.au). Mark’s photos have been published in fashion & culture magazine Poster, and online for Jazz Australia. More of his work can be viewed at www.corleve.com

Bruce Petty is one of Australia’s best-known political satirists and cartoonists. He is a regular contributor to Melbourne’s The Age newspaper. His film Leisure won the Oscar for Best Animation (1976). He has published a number of books and his cartoons have also featured in The New Yorker and Punch. He has made a number of award winning films and in 2007 Petty was awarded the AFI award for Best Direction for his film, Global Haywire.

Penni Russon, Consulting Editor (Fiction) has been working as a freelance reader and editor for ten years, most notably for Australia’s largest independent publisher, Allen & Unwin. She recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Melbourne University. Penni is also the author of five critically acclaimed novels for children and young adults. She writes, studies and edits from home while looking after her two young children and no, she has no idea how that works (and sometimes it really doesn’t). She blogs regularly at www.eglantinescake.blogspot.com

Melbourne-based John Ryrie has been printmaking since 1979. He also paints and sculpts. John studied at the Gippsland Institute (now the Monash Gippsland campus) and then for three years at The Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). In about 1988 John began regularly going to hear Musiikki-oy and drawing the musicians. He did posters and CD Covers for them and also for Tibetan Dixie, Scud, the Sam Keevers Trio, Interfred, The Big One, Go Jam, Blue Wolf, Melbourne Improvising Association (MIA) and now for Blow and Black Jesus.

John Shand began writing on Australian jazz for Jazz magazine in 1981. For over 15 years he has been jazz critic for The Sydney Morning Herald. He contributed to the New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz, edited and co-wrote the 24 Hours Essential Guide to Jazz, edited Jazz’n’Blues magazine, and has been a regular jazz contributor to 24 Hours, Limelight, and Australian Hi-Fi magazines. His writing on the subject has also appeared in Vogue Australia, The (Sydney) Magazine, Rhythms, Jazzchord, Beomag, and programs for the Sydney Festival. Many Australian jazz CDs bear his liner notes. In 2008 he published Jazz: The Australian Accent (UNSW Press). John is also a playwright and librettist.

Michael Webb is a lecturer in the Music Education Unit at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. He completed a Ph D in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, USA, based on field research in Papua New Guinea. Michael finds the diversity and originality of contemporary Australian jazz inspirational and he is committed to encouraging its study and practices in Australian music education. He is convinced of the value of aural learning and improvisation in music pedagogy. Michael won the 2007 National Jazz Writing Competition.

Peter Wockner was raised in country Queensland listening to his father’s extensive jazz record collection which included a wide range of artists as diverse as the free improvising duo McJad to the exquisite Jacques Loussier trio. In 2006 Peter was named the winner of the National Jazz Writing Competition at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz. He has been an active jazz radio broadcaster since 1991, currently presenting one of Australia’s longest running jazz programs Frank Presley’s Now’s the Time on Sydney’s FM 99.3 every Sunday night. He has been the editor of the Sydney based jazz e-zine www.jazzandbeyond.com.au since 2003.

Miriam Zolin is the managing editor and publisher of extempore. Miriam’s interest in live jazz and improvised music was sparked in January 2001 and has rarely flagged since. She is the author of the novel Tristessa & Lucido and has written for AllAboutJazz.com, Jazz Australia and The Australian Music Centre’s magazine Resonate. Her work has been included in The University of Melbourne’s PostGraduate Review and Muse, the UTS anthology Small Suburban Crimes, The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Reader (Omaha, Nebraska) and Earth Garden magazine. Mark Isaacs included her essay responding to his CD Visions in the CD’s liner notes.

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