Katie Noonan and her trio of 14 years, Elixir, have just released their long awaited second album First Seed Ripening.
The trio have just finished a recent national tour supporting American jazz legend Ron Carter and are now heading off on the road again to launch their brilliant new CD.
Katie Noonan is by far one of the greatest singers Australia has ever produced – six times platinum selling and three times ARIA Award winning. While Noonan is the obvious public focal point, Elixir is a trio of musical equals.
Since their self-titled first album became a top 20 best-seller upon its release in 2003, Melbourne-based guitarist Stephen Magnusson, a major solo recording artist in his own right, joined the band in 2005.
Regarded by many as Australia’s finest jazz guitarist, Magnusson has shared the limelight with the likes of Paul Grabowsky, Scott Tinkler, Michelle Nicole, Paul Kelly and Vince Jones.
He was awarded the Swiss Diagonal Arts Grant and the Pop Kredit award in 1999, was co-winner of National Jazz Award the following year, and has been nominated for the Freedman Fellowship (twice) and the Melbourne Prize.
Rounding out the trio, Katie’s husband Zac Hurren, provides his mellifluous, lyrical saxophone lines, as distinctive a feature of the Elixir sound as Katie’s sublime vocals.
Zac Hurren won the National Jazz Award (in 2009) and is a truly unique and distinctly Australian saxophonist, composer and improviser. Steeped in the jazz heritage of Coltrane, Shorter, Coleman and Shepp, Zac’s debut album ‘Exordium’ was released in Australia in 2007 on the Jazzhead label, receiving critical acclaim and heralding a triumphant new arrival on the contemporary jazz scene.
The trio’s new album First Seed Ripening is largely inspired by the words of legendary Australian poet (and winner of the 2000 Patrick White Award) Thomas Shapcott. In penetrating deep into the heart of Shapcott’s words, the trio enlisted the help of string players from the Australian Chamber Orchestra (with whom Katie has worked regularly), and leading jazz players Jonathan Zwartz on bass and Simon Barker on drums.
“Our aim,” Katie says of the new album, “was to make gentle, intimate music, and it was all about freedom and spontaneity.” But, whilst the majority of songs on First Seed Ripening feature lyrics by Shapcott, there are also the kinds of inspired covers at which Elixir have always excelled, including Joni Mitchell’s My Old Man, and Split Enz’s I Hope I Never.
Live, the album will be launched in Mullum by one of Australia’s finest string quartets – The Tulipwood Quartet. It will be a truly sublime night of musical elixir!
