Monash jazz star hits double success note
Professor Paul Grabowsky
Australian jazz legend and Monash academic Professor Paul Grabowsky AO has received two prestigious music awards for his sextet album The Bitter Suite.
The five time ARIA award winner Professor Grabowsky, is the Executive Director of Monash University Academy of Performing Arts. Professor Grabowsky has won an ARIA Fine Arts Award for Best Jazz Album and the Australian Independent Music Award for Best Independent Jazz Album.
The Bitter Suite (ABC Jazz/UMA) was recorded in 2012 by Professor Grabowsky on piano and comprises eight original pieces plus one by the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin.
Professor Grabowsky said the pieces were not exactly easy, with “some strange metrical things on top of strange harmonic things”.
“It is supposed to be fun to play, and fun to listen to,” he said. “I think of the pieces as self-portraits in which special figures in my life, both living and long gone, are hovering in the background.”
Professor Grabowsky received the ARIA Fine Arts award alongside an impressive cast of musicians and artists who won in other categories, including Joseph Tawadros, Lior and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.
Head of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Associate Professor Rob Burke, congratulated Professor Grabowsky on his success.
“Paul’s contribution to the School of Music over the past two years has furthered our status as a forward-thinking and progressive music institution on both the national and international stage,” Associate Professor Burke said.
“We commend him on his continued contributions and support."
Professor Grabowsky adds these awards to his remarkable collection of 2014 awards, including an APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association) and Australian Jazz Bell Award.
Also nominated for the ARIA Fine Art Award for Best Jazz Album was The Monash Sessions: Vince Jones (Jazzhead), a collaboration of staff and students from the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, as well as The Hunters & Pointers (Which Way Music/Fuse Group) by faculty member Professor Tony Gould with Graeme Lyall, John Hoffman, and sessional teachers Ben Robertson and Tony Floyd.