Photo credit: River Petein

ARIA-nominated Queensland instrumental trio East of West has announced the upcoming release of their fourth album, Velella.

Over the eight years of their collaboration, East of West have developed an intuitive musical relationship, flourishing through their dynamic interplays, virtuosic unison melodies and expressive soloing. Gajić’s compositions explore gentle melodic motifs nested in uptempo passages set to Balkan-influenced rhythms, interspersed with moments of mesmerising musical sparseness.

“When composing a piece of music, I begin with a kernel of an idea - something that appears during practice, daily life or even in the middle of the night.”, Gajić says.

“I start developing the motif, and then decide if it is going to work for the trio or if it’s more suited to other projects. The pieces on Pastorale were pieces that asked for another element, which I felt to be piano, and after a long time listening to many pianists, I heard Romano playing and immediately realised he was the pianist I wanted to work with on these pieces.”

Philip Griffin, the trio’s oud player and a highly skilled naturalist, has also contributed two compositions to this album: a Distinct Lack of Parrotfinch - a driving piece in the unusual time signature of 50/8 - whose title links to his adventures in search of the elusive bird. His second piece, Camille, was written for his god-daughter.

Notes from musicians on this album:

Goran Gajić

Green Clouds is about being suspended in space, like watching a storm brewing on the western horizon on a hot summer Queensland afternoon.

Small Hero, inspired by album 'B' by the fabulous Irish concertina player Cormac Begley (Begley meaning ‘small hero’ in Irish Gaelic: beag ‘small’ + laoch ‘hero’. Cormac does such a great job repeating yet varying a melody, so I wanted to use that idea - to treat the melody in a free manner, as if it was a folk dance piece, then introduce solos and improvisation on top of that.

Spring Street is dedicated to a sun-beaten locale in Brisbane’s West End, with all its eclectic and inspiring residents and landlords, where Malindi and Goran lived for a time in an apartment building that often felt more like a giant, rambling, shared house.

Gathering is another of the trio’s compositions written in Leigh, New Zealand, this time inspired by a spontaneous and wild dinner gathering of more than 50 family members. It recalls a place of connections and family, a place of beauty of land and sea, a place that invites memories.

Overseas : This name was inspired by Goran’s having come from Bosnia - a country that has only 24km of coastline and where every departure prior to the advent of aeroplane travel meant travelling by land - to modern Australia, enveloped as it is by seas and oceans, where to leave the country or to arrive to a new one means to venture over seas.

Dancing Leaves can be interpreted quite literally. Trees dancing in the wind show no repetition, every moment unique. Dancing leaves, together with Small Hero, opens up what I would like to consider a new approach and an important progression in how the trio members interact and how our music gets arranged, morphing seamlessly between open solos and written parts, those two being of equal importance in the arrangement, and consequently in the listening experience. This is one of the important achievements of this album, for me: it leads us towards a new way of making music together, something that is emerging at a new level after having worked together for over 8 years.

Velella (By the wind sailor) refers to Velella velella, a colonial hydrozoan, whose way of life floating on the surface of the open ocean perfectly encapsulates the feeling of this tune.

Philip Griffin

Camille : This piece was written as an 18th birthday present for my goddaughter, Camille Gill. As well as possessing her own fabulous qualities, Camille is also the first-born granddaughter of perhaps my most important musical mentor, the late Richard Gill, who changed my life in many ways, and to whom I owe so much. The main melody of Camille is written in one of my very favourite time-signatures, 11/8, which can feel like a five-beat meter with a long third beat, giving it a gently rolling feel.

A distinct lack of parrotfinch : The Blue-faced Parrotfinch (Erythrura trichroa) is one of Australia’s most elusive birds. Most birders who have encountered the species in Australia will have seen it in a single small clearing, high in the rainforest, on one particular mountain in Far North Queensland.

On a recent family trip to Samoa, I held a quiet hope of encountering its relative, the Samoan form of the Royal Parrotfinch—imagining, perhaps naively, that it might reveal itself more readily than its Australian cousin. Instead, my searches were marked by a distinct lack of parrotfinch. This piece dwells in that liminal space between expectation and frustration (so eloquently explored in Goran's double bass solo), where anticipation lingers unresolved.

Composers who like to explore irregular time signatures can be tempted to extend themselves into new and exotic territory. For this piece, I attempted to find a groove in a time signature I'd never played, nor knowingly heard before - 50/8. Naturally, my aim is for it to sound and feel good (and never academic), above all other considerations. I unreservedly extend you the right to adjudicate as to whether my quest was successful.

Malindi Morris

Each album represents new territory for the trio, and this album is no different. In it, we delve into longer passages of improvisational conversations and strive to create and maintain a focused sense of space, even during the busier passages. It’s always an interesting challenge to adapt the improvised passages to the needs of the piece, aiming to create something fresh each time the piece is played, without falling into habitual patterns. In this way, compositions will sound both familiar and new when heard in concert, while the improvisations we created during the recording process are frozen in time…

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