Reviewer rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Bennetts Lane
November 11

WHEN Tamara Murphy was awarded the PBS Young Elder of Jazz Commission this year, it spurred the young Melbourne bassist to create an ambitious five-part suite (Big Creatures and Little Creatures) for her band, Murphy's Law.

The suite's composed movements (or ''big creatures'') are interspersed with spontaneously improvised passages (''little creatures''), and the movements can be arranged in any order and led by any member of the ensemble.

The idea, as Murphy explained before embarking on Sunday's performance, is to blur the line between composition and improvisation, and to keep the players - bandleader included - on their toes. This is a work that requires close listening, from participants and audience alike. Fortunately, the rewards for such focused attention are ample. Sunday night's concert took us on a fascinating sonic journey, filled with shifting moods, textures and musical motifs. Murphy introduced the first movement (A Song for Two Rivers) with some exploratory harmonics on arco bass, then settled into a restful sway beneath Jordan Murray's beautifully burnished trombone. Paircut was pinned to a muscular, funky backbeat, while Boulders Make Strong Friends saw the band dive into unexpectedly gritty rock territory, complete with blazing guitar solo from Nashua Lee.

The final movement (Bitter Sweet) was a miniature suite in itself. Murphy and Jordan began with a hypnotic, dreamlike duet before drummers Joe Talia and Daniel Farrugia introduced an irresistible Latin shuffle, gradually amping up the volume until they were throbbing in syncopated tandem like twin heartbeats. Superb.