Happy new year adventurous music lovers and boy do we have some treats lined up for you to soften the landing into February. Join us at Stadium Rockdale on the 11th of Feb to hear Jetsetters Ellen and Mary perform some brand new stuff and then blow your socks off Ben Lerner Quartet. Doors from 7:30.
This is an intimate parlour gig so be prepared to get cozy. Unfortunately the only way in is up some stairs so please keep that in mind. We are so looking forward to listening all together.
Ben Lerner is an outstanding young artist who has quickly established himself as one of the emerging voices in Jazz and on the Alto Saxophone in Australia. Since moving to Sydney from Auckland in 2020, Ben has received the Sydney Conservatorium of Music Scholarship the Henderson Global Mobility Scholarship, the Ernest Heine Family Foundation Scholarship, and has played with the likes of Mike Nock, Matt McMahon, Laurence Pike, Andrew Gander, Steve Barry, Jonathan Crayford, and many other greats. He was a finalist for the prestigious National Jazz Award in 2024.
After forming the Ben Lerner Quartet in early 2021 as an outlet to workshop and perform his original compositions, Ben has quickly found his feet as a band leader. This has culminated in performing as a part of SIMA's Jazz:NOW summer festival, a seven–gig tour of New Zealand, the Inner West Jazz Fest, various appearances in venues around Sydney, and now an eight-gig tour of the East Coast. Ben performs frequently as a freelancing musician around Sydney, and is an in demand sideman. He is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and is soon to commence studying a Masters Degree at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music on a scholarship.
The Ben Lerner Quartet features Steve Barry (Piano), Max Alduca (Bass), and Alex Young (Drums) and will perform a set of new music, set to be recorded later in the year.
Trumpeter Ellen Kirkwood and cellist Mary Rapp explore both conventional and unconventional sounds and approaches to composition and improvisation. Their music moves through varied textures and contours, with character and expression, evoking land and waterscapes and their inhabitants, and how we as humans relate to these.