Above image: Tomeka Reid… Photo credit Oliver Abels
This concert at the ACO Neilson in Sydney’s Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival. This festival, the brainchild of the then artistic director of the Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA) Peter Rechniewski and his colleague Joanne Kee, began in 2012 as a modest event featuring six performances across two weeks. Since then it has grown into one of the most significant jazz events in Sydney’s annual calendar. This year it has ten concerts spread over ten days from October 23-31, 2026.
Given the last-minute cancellation of the scheduled opening concert on Thu Oct 22, which was to present the African American singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, the festival’s opening concert on Fri Oct 23, now featured Véronique Serret (violin, vocals, effects) playing solo and, from the US, the Tomeka Reid Quartet.
Serret opened the concert in splendid fashion. While she’s had a busy career as an orthodox violinist over many years, and is obviously a violin virtuoso, she apparently is now active in a related idiom, what I suppose we can call New Music.
She’s probably best-known for her 2024 album Migrating Bird, which was conceived during the pandemic, an era which she describes on Bandcamp as “A time that allowed for introspection and reflection. A deeper connection with Mother Nature.” Accordingly, her festival performance was replete with references to such things as water, birds, rivers and so on, including compositions from that album entitled Brookfield, Water Colour and River Runs Deep.
As the initial sound we heard was the unmistakable sound of birds which apparently had been pre-recorded by Serret, I can only assume that she was using what I understand to be pedal boards which gave her the capacity to introduce at will effects that exemplified whatever sounds found in nature that she wished to reproduce.
This was an energising performance from Serret, providing a beautiful and impressive curtain-raiser for what was to follow, from the Tomeka Reid band.
In preparing for this concert I listened to the album entitled Tomeka Reid Quartet, released in 2015, with Reid on cello, and including the same personnel who performed in Sydney: Mary Halvorson (guitar), Jason Roebke (bass) & Tomas Fujiwara (drums). This is a splendid album soundwise, which was widely celebrated. The New York Times described Reid as “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary creative music. Emerging from Chicago’s celebrated jazz and improvised music scene, Reid has built an international reputation for her fearless artistry, combining the lyricism of the Western classical tradition with the rich musical languages of the African diaspora and the avant-garde.”
Significantly, and I stress that significance, the sound on this album is exceedingly beautiful and represents what I imagine to be basically the quartet’s preferred sound. The playing of each musician can be heard clearly, and therefore can be enjoyed immensely. I take it as self-evident that an American jazz group does not release such an album into the marketplace without being entirely happy with its sound.
I take no joy in pointing out that what I heard at The Neilson was a very poor representation, soundwise, of the music that this quartet plays. For a start the venue was not well-equipped for this sort of jazz group. The hall had a very high ceiling, which may suit say classical music performances, and there were few absorbent materials close to the stage to increase the warmth of the music at source. Where I was sitting there was very little presence on the sound of the three major instruments, the double bass, the guitar and the cello. Not only did the sound of these instruments lack presence, but frequently they were in fact difficult to hear, if not inaudible. Predictably, given these conditions, it was the drums which often dominated the sound mix throughout, particularly when Fujiwara used sticks.
I was particularly disappointed that I didn’t get to hear guitarist Mary Halvorson to advantage. She has been described in The Guardian (UK edition) as “steeped in the jazz guitar tradition yet also versed in the disruptive nature of punk, new wave and noise music”. The New York Times described her as “widely regarded as one of the most innovative musicians of her generation”. John Zorn once described her as “a brilliant soloist with a unique, often quirky approach and a beautiful guitar tone that reaches back to tradition”.
Whenever a sound maladjustment such as the one I’ve just described, happens – even if it’s only relatively minor – it’s highly debatable as to whom is responsible. But it’s perhaps the most important question on which to ponder, as music, in the long run, is only sound. But I stress that this is complicated; there are no easy explanations.
Perhaps the way in which the sound reaches our ears is a function of where we are located in a particular venue. Often, during an intermission in past concerts, I’ve moved to another seat where the sound is vastly improved. On this occasion I was not aware of the sound problems that were to emerge in the Reid set. When I arrived I failed to sit in the front row which was available, and took a decision to sit further back and higher up in order to get a better view of the musicians. I now realise this was a mistake on my part; I should have known better.
Otherwise, a sound maladjustment is sometimes the fault of the sound technician who may not be aware of how a particular band should be amplified, that is to say, how a certain sound balance can be arrived at. To give an example of a conventional sound balance issue in the past, I’ve been at umpteen concerts featuring trios of musicians playing the elementary instruments of piano, bass & drums, where the sound technician has obviously never heard Keith Jarrett’s Standards trio, nor the Oscar Peterson Trio. That’s a sound technician who’s ill-prepared.
Still, who knows where the truth lies? There may be no viable answer as to why the sound of the Reid quartet was unsatisfactory at this concert at the ACO Neilson. I stress that this conundrum is not the responsibility of the musicians; we cannot blame them; they can only play according to the sound they’re hearing through their foldback monitors. They have no idea how what they’re playing sounds in the audience.
In a nutshell, after much thought, I came to the conclusion regrettably that I wasn’t in a position to provide an adequate review of the music I heard on this occasion. The sound quality virtually disqualified me from producing a review I’d be happy to see on the page. Subsequently I’ve spoken to handpicked friends who attended this concert, and nothing I’ve heard from them seriously contradicts what I’ve said. Sometimes life is a series of missed opportunities, and this was one of them.
I’ve been in the practice of reviewing the opening concert of the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival and usually at least another selected concert, going back to 2017 when the great American drummer Terri Lyne Carrington opened the festival in that year, performing with Sydney musicians Sandy Evans, Ben Hauptmann, and Jonathan Zwartz, plus New Zealand’s Aron Ottignon. This was at Foundry 616, where the sound in that venue was characteristically excellent.
In subsequent years the festival headliners I’ve reviewed include Charanee Wade in 2018; the Australian singer Wilma Reading in 2019; Virna Sanzone Quartet in 2021; Melissa Aldana in 2022; Cécile McLorin Salvant in 2023; Jazzmeia Horn and Gian Slater in 2024; and Samara Joy and Hiromi in 2025. Reviewing such important SIMA concerts has become something of a tradition for me, which I’d like to continue into the future, if I live long enough.
In fairness, I should point that in the case of the 2026 Tomeka Reid concert I was very much out of step with the majority of those in attendance at the ACO Neilson. As usual, a typical Australian audience gave rapturous applause to a visiting American jazz band; this has been a long tradition here in Sydney and I often wonder why local audiences are so generously appreciative. I suspect the explanation could well be that some local jazz enthusiasts wish to show the visiting US musicians that we are very hip Down Under and, even when the visiting musicians have performed poorly, or their sound has been sub-standard, the fans still insist on applauding enthusiastically.
It’s certainly not regarded as hip, I’ve found, to be sceptical about the music being played by American jazz musicians. Many of us simply assume that the Americans are always superior. (Often they are, of course but, in my view, the special uniqueness of our local Australian musicians is seriously underestimated in comparison). This might be a cynical suggestion on my part, but I believe there’s much evidence available to support my contentious theories concerning the expertise of the local jazz audience; it could well be that many of us are not good listeners.
Off the top of my head, I had some reservations about some of the strategies pursued by SIMA in relation to this current festival. There was a packed program, featuring a great number of leading international musicians, which would have required a substantial investment by SIMA. The ticket prices appeared to be high, in a time when everyone agrees there’s a cost of living crisis, and I wonder if audiences were large enough to cover costs. Another of my reservations was the fact that, in a number of venues, seats were not numbered, so the best seats were taken on a first in, first served, basis. This was an irritant, guaranteed to bother some patrons. Also, is it a viable idea to present jazz music in a church, where in the past, the acoustics have so often proved to be unreliable?
It goes without saying that SIMA, which programs the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival, courtesy of Jess Green, the festival’s program director, is an exceedingly valuable jazz organisation in today’s world. Its activities could not take place without substantial financial support, which is documented on its website as follows: “SIMA is supported by the NSW Government through Sound NSW and by the Australian Government through Creative Australia. The Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival is supported by the City of Sydney Council and the Anthony & Sharon Lee Foundation.”
This concert at the ACO Neilson in Sydney’s Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, took place on Friday October 23, 2026, and featured the violinist Véronique Serret and the quartet led by the American cellist Tomeka Reid, including the guitarist Mary Halvorson, the double bassist Jason Roebke & the drummer Tomas Fujiwara.
