John Scurry's Reverse Swing - Post Matinée (LSR20175)

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

This new release comprises of freshly minted original songs from the Australian guitarist John Scurr a stalwart of the Swing and Trad jazz scene in for over five decades.John is also a renowned visual artist and teacher and has performed at most major jazz festivals throughout Australia and Europe as a musician and his paintings have been exhibited at major galleries in Victoria and New South Wales - including the superb cover image of this CD.Throughout this recording his compositions allow his musical colleagues an opportunity to shine and improvise and that they do with style and panache.Melbourne based vocalist Shelly Scown appears on four tracks as does National Jazz Award winner James Macaulay playing trombone on several of the other.There’s also some fun and dexterous trumpet playing from Eugene Ball alongside the accomplished guitar of Scurry and Matt Boden’s gleefully played piano. Howard Cairns is marvellous on the double bass and English concertina and the clarinet of Michael McQuaid and saxophone of Phil Noy are a joy to hear. They’re all driven along by the exemplary percussion and drums of Danny Fischer.It’s a fun album that creates an instant party atmosphere of nostalgic style jazz but with all new compositions that you can dance to or just enjoy in the background as rich memories from less hectic days

Barry O’Sullivan