Tall Poppies is delighted to present this CD of Australian orchestral works that might very well have slipped from view forever but for the archives of its composer, Bruce Cale. He has retained high quality copies of these works since their performances, and these recordings have been mastered to create this first release of Cale’s excellent compositions.
That they sound so well is also a tribute to the original ABC engineers.
Bruce Cale is possibly best known in Australia as a brilliant jazz bassist who has worked with all of Australia’s jazz luminaries. His work with the Bruce Cale Quartet represented one of the peaks of Australian jazz performance and is remembered in an archival recording released by Tall Poppies (TP175) last year to great acclaim. Cale is also a composer with a wide-ranging oeuvre who studied with George Russell in the US in 1981. Russell says of Cale:
“Bruce Cale is a marvellously imaginative, compelling musician. I have followed his work over several decades, and have observed with pleasure his evolution. Informed by the great nature of his native Australia, his compositions are lyrical and elegant. His use of the harmonic palette is uniquely his own, and draws on his early training as a jazz musician. He is unafraid of beauty; his work is thrilling in its complexity and scope. If I have had any affect on Mr. Cale’s work, I am humbled. He has become a distinguished composer of his generation, and I look forward to his continued contributions.”
