Pic Melanie Charles… Photo credit Shane Rozario
When a musical artist such as Brooklyn-born Melanie Charles is promoted as “renowned for her genre-blending fusion of jazz, soul, and R&B, layered with electronics and samples”, one doesn’t quite know what to expect. Those genres are of course related forms of improvised music, but which of them would be dominant? In fact, I wondered, how much jazz would we expect to hear, in what is after all a jazz festival? The result in this case, I’m sorry to say, was ambiguous.
Of course, the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival (SIWJF) is not merely a jazz festival, it’s specifically a women’s jazz festival, so I expect that the inclusion of Charles (compositions, vocals, flute, effects) and her two accompanying musicians Paul Wilson Bae (keyboards), and Cinque ‘Ignabu’ Kemp (drums) could well be justified.
The first surprise of the night was the set-up in Mary’s Underground. In October, 2020, I attended this venue to review the singer Emma Pask and her trio, whose performance was part of the SIWJF of that year. On that occasion Mary’s was operating as a conventional music venue with tables and chairs available for the (mostly elderly), over-50s jazz audience.
The October 2025 venue looked vastly different. It featured a completely bare dance floor in front of the stage area, for most of the length of the room, with limited tables and chairs spread around the fringes of the room, plus seating against the walls, mostly a long way from the performance area. My daughter and I, who were on the guest list, were lucky to get a table for two with good sightlines to the stage.
Gossip at the bar suggested that a number of people, unable to sit down, and not wishing to stand for three hours, intended to leave and give the performance a miss. Some ticket-holders were palpably upset.
The support act was a quintet led by the singer Ella Haber, apparently riding high on the success of her 2019 debut EP entitled Clay. The band included electronic keyboards, tenor sax, guitar, electric bass and drums. I felt that the microphone she was using was not kind to her. Certainly her voice is much warmer and fuller on the internet, where Clay can be found on Bandcamp.
At the end of Haber’s performance I asked my daughter what she thought. Two opinions were ventured: the volume of the backing musicians was too strong for her voice; and her songs were not particularly distinctive. I tended to agree with both observations and would add a further one: that the time-feels adopted by the musicians were unusually conventional, just normal rock style eight-feels.
Still, given better conditions under which to perform, and sound reproduction which captured the quality of her voice which is so impressive on the internet, I feel that Haber has all the raw material for success in an unforgiving entertainment industry. I certainly wish her well.
During Haber’s half-hour set, very few people danced, given that the rhythms in her music did not lend themselves that way, although her compositions utilised rock time-feels. When Charles and her two accompanists came onstage at 8.40 pm, things were immediately different; the dance floor was at once crowded and it therefore made sense for the first time that the venue had been prepared for a dancing crowd.
Of course the music was very loud, if not deafening. During the first half-an-hour of this set, I genuinely feared damage to my hearing, until the music quietened down somewhat about half-way through the set.
There is no stage in Mary’s Underground – that is to say a raised area for the performers to play on – so I was rarely able to see them over the tops of the heads of those dancers who crowded the performing area. I still had the benefit of sound of course, and could hear when Charles sang, or played flute. I felt her vocals were very impressive, but her flute playing I’m sorry to say sounded somewhat mediocre to my ears, and really not fit for a jazz festival.
The two accompanying musicians Wilson Bae (who played keyboard bass as well as orthodox electric piano and synthesiser), and drummer Ignabu were palpably incredible musicians, as Americans often are. They were able to set up pounding rhythms which had the dancers bouncing up and down for long periods. I can remember a number of whistling synth solos from Wilson Bae. I felt that both men were far more brilliant than their leader Charles.
At one stage Charles announced solo spots for both Wilson Bae and Ignabu which were long, impressive, and brilliant. These solo offerings were riotously applauded, underlining how Sydneyites are always determined to be a good audience for such visiting American stars. When it came to her turn, Charles surprisingly sang a relatively slow ballad in 12/8, which suggested that the music was at last venturing closer to jazz. Certainly it suggested that, contrary to what I first thought, this was not simply a band playing only dance music.
This set, which lasted a little over an hour, finished with a tune entitled Jazz (Ain’t Nothin’ But Soul), which has been recorded in the past by both Betty Carter and Esperanza Spalding. This was a pleasure to hear, bringing the performance to a close on an unexpected note. Melanie Charles received a riotous and enthusiastic reception, indicating that many members of the audience were glad to be at the gig. While my own enthusiasm was muted, Charles could be forgiven if she felt this gig was enormously successful.
A final observation from my daughter who, when she was a young person, was a devoted fan of the Australian jazz/funk outfit The Cat Empire. She can recognise quality musicianship and has good musical taste. Her verdict on this gig however was damning. She disliked Melanie Charles’s music intensely, and felt that the local singer Ella Haber had much more to offer as a musical artist than the trio containing the visiting Americans.
The Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival is presented by SIMA, and the sponsors are The City of Sydney, Creative Australia, Create NSW, Sound NSW and The Anthony & Sharon Lee Foundation.
This performance took place on October 26, 2025, at Mary’s Underground, Reiby Place, Circular Quay featuring Melanie Charles (compositions, vocals, flute, effects), Paul Wilson Bae (keyboards), and Cinque ‘Ignabu’ Kemp (drums). The concert was opened by a quintet featuring the vocalist Ella Haber.
