Photo by catherine mcelhoneProjects
[A]part
"Composer Ellen Kirkwood... is clearly an emergent talent, whose work bears comparison with composers like Maria Schneider and James Darcy Argue."
- Des Cowley, Australian Book Review
‘A composition that has all it takes to be a modern Australian classic.” -Nikos Fotakis, australianjazz.net
“[A]part moves with a big sound and a bigger heart; this is instrumental music which speaks louder than pundits’ words and clearer than our present troubles.”
- Todd B Gruel, acloserlisten.com
13-piece powerhouse Sirens Big Band plus featured soloists Andrea Keller, Sandy Evans and Gian Slater, present Ellen Kirkwood’s epic 56-minute, four-part suite. The magnum opus is Ellen’s emotive and captivating response to growing issues in a rapidly changing world: the wonder and malignance of the internet, the refugee crisis, greed and climate change, and reflections/reactions to the present.
[A]part traverses a diverse series of moods and influences. The musical metamorphosis from one section to another sees a vast array of ideas and styles including neo-classicism, chorale, afro-cuban, afrobeat and electronica. With echoes of Guillermo Klein and Carla Bley, Kirkwood’s imaginative and daring composition style is abundant here, as she draws listeners in with her narrative-style writing, full of character, feeling and unexpected twists. Listeners can expect an engrossing journey through music that evokes rage, bewilderment, calm, determination, and everything in between.
[A]part was penned in 2016-17 during Ellen’s Australia Council-funded composition mentorship with composer/pianist Barney McAll. [A]part was a 2018 finalist in the APRA Art Music Awards for Jazz Work of the Year, and Ellen was a finalist in the 2017 Freedman Jazz Fellowships largely due to this work. Kirkwood was inner of the 2019 NSW APRA Art Music Award for Jazz Excellence, on the strength of [A]part and other activities in 2018. The studio-recorded album of [A]part was released in October 2018 on Earshift Music, and launched with performances at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues and the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival.
A dynamic collective bringing new sounds to the traditional big band setting, Sirens Big Band are passionate about increasing gender diversity in jazz through their predominantly female and trans line-up. Ellen Kirkwood, a member since Sirens’ formation in early 2010, has been an important contributor to the group’s unique repertoire. Pianist Andrea Keller, saxophonist Sandy Evans and vocalist Gian Slater are three of Australia’s most celebrated and in-demand jazz performer/composers, and have played a significant part in inspiring Ellen and her generation of creative jazz musicians.
Watch: Short Documentary on [A]part
Related Links
The Mieville Project
The quirky, rhythmic eccentricity of Ellen Kirkwood's music meets the weird, dark and imaginative writing of British author China Mieville in a suite of four illustrative narrated pieces. Commissioned by Ars Musica Australis and premiered in October 2015 at the Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival to a room full of enraptured listeners, the suite musically explores excerpts from Mieville's books. A runaway train ambushed by frolicking spirits, a nightmare moth with hypnotic wings of swirling darkness, a disease passed on by the utterance of a word, and a cleaning construct that is developing sentient thought are all brought to life through this colourful and captivating set of music.
The suite is comprised of four pieces; Demons of Motion, Wormword, Slake Moth and Construct. The Mieville Project performed the suite on three occasions in 2015 and 2016.
“Brilliantly devised” - John Shand
Wormword by The Mieville Project - Live at Foundry616
Ellen Kirkwood is the director of Spectra Jazz Orchestra, and runs the band alongside co-ordinator Kate Richards.
Spectra Jazz Orchestra is an initiative for young women and gender diverse musicians which builds a bridge between music education on the secondary and tertiary levels, into the professional music world. As the wider jazz community consists predominantly of male musicians, Spectra also empowers and creates a supportive space for its members to grow as musicians. They play a fun and diverse range of jazz and jazz-adjacent works, with an emphasis on adventurous Australian music. Spectra has been running since 2016 and has performed at some of Sydney’s favourite jazz joints, such as Lazybones, Camelot, the Red Rattler and more, and festivals including the International Women’s Jazz Festival, Manly Jazz Festival and Marrickville Music Festival.
In 2023, Spectra released their debut album, Supernova, featuring 6 works by Australian composers, including band member Katie Bombardieri. Spectra Jazz Orchestra thanks their generous supporters, including UNSW where they are an Ensemble in Residence.
Photo by bee elton
Photo by noni carrollFat Yahoozah
Bandleader, trumpeter, vocalist and award-winning composer Ellen Kirkwood created Fat Yahoozah with a burning desire to make vibrant and danceable music combining the best bits of her favourite styles from around the world including Balkan, Afrobeat, Mariachi, Ethiopian and Ska. Luscious horn lines, a banging rhythm section, epic solos and a dash of vocals make listening to Fat Yahoozah quite the party.
Based in Sydney, this group of talented, seasoned and versatile musicians have played with such exciting and successful groups as The Bakery, Mister Ott, Sirens Big Band, On The Stoop and Watussi. Fat Yahoozah's music is influenced by Goran Bregovic, the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, Fela Kuti, Mariachi El Bronx, Mulatu Astatke and many other exciting groups from home and abroad.
Fat Yahoozah released their debut album “I Don't Care” in July 2015 to a sold out crowd at popular and vibrant Lazybones Lounge, in Sydney. They have also played at some of Sydney's most exciting music venues, such as The Basement, Camelot Lounge, Venue 505 and the Sly Fox, and at festivals including Newtown Festival, Yackandandah Folk Festival, Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival and Dungog Festival. Fat Yahoozah played their last gig at a special International Women’s Day “Jazz at the Pav” edition on 8th March 2019, which, to this day, you will still see posters for at your local Inner West rehearsal studio. As of 2023, Ellen has formed a new band called EK & the EkstraOrdinaires that plays some Fat Yahoozah favourites, but in a smaller format. As she has a lot on her plate, Ellen’s plan is for EK & the EkstraOrdinaires to be a “low effort" band, hence the lack of material on this page. You can follow them on Instagram though - @ek_andthe_xos
Fat Yahoozah’s album “I Don’t Care” is available on Bandcamp and streaming servies.
“Gracefully genre bending between multiple styles, these top notch tooters are original, seductive and sophisticated, keeping your torso undulating across every accent." - Luke Dubber (Hermitude)
Captain Kirkwood
Album cover by monica higginsIn 2012, Ellen Kirkwood won the Jann Rutherford Memorial Award for young Australian women in jazz. This included project funding, a recording, and performances, and Ellen chose to form a new band, Captain Kirkwood, as a vehicle for the works written with the award’s support. The band members were Paul Cutlan on reeds, Glenn Doig on piano, Tom Botting on bass, and Alon Ilsar on drums.
For the award-funded project, Ellen wrote a 5 part, narrated suite called “Theseus and the Minotaur” based on the Greek legend. Utilising the expressive qualities of contemporary jazz and improvisation, along with spoken words performed by Ketan Joshi, the suite evokes the suspense, romance, danger and ultimate triumph that colour the story.
In addition to the Theseus suite, the group performed various original pieces by Ellen and other band members, across many successful performances from 2012-2014.
Other Projects
In the 2021 lockdown, as a way of staying creative, I decided to try a program called Audiomulch, which had been recommended to me. In addition to experimenting with pre-recorded sounds, I also learnt some of the ways that live sound could be processed, and over time developed some pieces where my trumpet, and sometimes percussion and voice, were processed in different ways. I ended up recording these for a streamed video set, aired by Johnston Street Jazz, who were putting on weekly streamed gigs through the lockdown. This video is what was aired by JSJ.
For the 2020 Festival of New Trumpet Music, aka FONT, I was commissioned to compose a work with accompanying video. Having improved my skills in using Reaper, a Digital Audio Workstation, and also due to Covid-related restrictions making it difficult to play music with others, I decided to create a work that was mostly solo, with a little extra recorded by saxophonist Harri Harding. I began writing Evaporate while on a short creative retreat to the Blue Mountains, Dharug Country. It was inspired by the mornings spent there, with thick mist amongst the trees and the birdsong welcoming the day as the fog slowly cleared. The footage was taken in several places; some while I was on that trip, some of the sky in a different part of Dharug Country, and some from the drive down Dooragan - a mountain in Biripi Country where I lived as a child.