Much loved friends Zephyrs Jazz and Four Winds reunite to present the ‘heartfelt’, ‘entrancing and dazzlingly unique’ pianist/composer Zela Margossian and her ARIA Award-nominated Quintet (‘ZMQ’).
DATE
Saturday 24 September 2022
TIME
4.00PM
Doors open 3.30PM
LOCATION
Windsong Pavilion
Four Winds
Barragga Bay NSW 2550
PRICE
$50
Zela Margossian’s late-2018 debut album, Transition, created a sensation both here and overseas. She certainly attracted Zephyrs Jazz’s attention, and Four Winds is thrilled that Zela and her Quintet will spend a week as Artists-in-Residence prior to their concert.
The liner notes to Transition describe its music as ‘melodies that juggle speed, calculation and experimentation alongside a sometimes soft, windswept mood’. It blends jazz with the Armenian, middle-eastern and classical traditions and with the music of ethno-jazz greats such as Tunisia’s Dhafer Youssef and fellow Armenian Tigran Hamasyan.
Transition attracted an ARIA nomination for Best World Jazz Album and enthusiastic and influential reviews. Prestigious performance invitations soon followed, including: the Beirut International Jazz Festival and Sydney’s International Women’s Jazz Festival.
Three years later, Zela and her Quintet have consolidated their reputation with their February 2022 release of a second enthusiastically received album, The Road. As the title implies, the album continues their musical journey.
The event runs for approx. 2 hours including interval. Bar will be open for drinks purchases at the start of the event and during interval.
Bookings are essential. Read more here about our venue’s Covid-19 protocols, and what to expect when you visit.
For more information on this concert, and to contact Zephyrs Jazz, please visit their website.
To contact Zephyrs Jazz, phone 0490 020 037 or email enquiries@zephyrsjazz.com.au.
This concert is presented as a partnership between Zephyrs Jazz and Four Winds.
About the Artists
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Zela Margossian
Zela Margossian’s compositions emerged from a life that was immersed in music, culturally rich and lived in sometimes challenging circumstances. She was born in Beirut to refugee Armenian parents and grew up there during the Lebanese civil war. Her parents gave her a piano for her fourth birthday and, she says, ‘I can’t remember a day since when music wasn’t a part of my life’. She went on to study classical piano performance in college and at the Lebanese Higher State Conservatorium.
After graduating she moved to Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan and continued her classical studies there, in her parent’s homeland and culture. She graduated from the renowned Komitas State Conservatorium five years later. In Yerevan she also discovered, and ‘fell in love with’, another music – the fusion of Armenian music and jazz.
This love of Armenian ‘ethno jazz’ became her musical starting point after circumstances brought another big change to her life – migration to Australia. In Sydney Zela eventually found support and guidance from the great Australian jazz musicians Judy Bailey and Sandy Evans, opportunities to feel her way into improvisation in SIMA’s Women’s Jazz Workshop sessions, and access to the teachers and students of Sydney Conservatorium’s Jazz Course. She credits these opportunities with helping her to find her jazz voice and talents.
Her new contacts also led her to the talented world-jazz musicians she needed for her planned quintet: Alexander Inman-Hislop (Drums); Adem Yilmaz (percussion); Jacques Emery (double bass); and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Vandegraaff (saxophones, clarinet, flute, Arabic nāys).
