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 | Peter Wockner's
love of jazz music was spawned unwittingly by growing up listening to his father's mammoth record collection in Goombungee on Queensland's Darling Downs.
The sounds of Ray Price, Graeme Bell, Bob Barnard, Art Pepper, Jacques Loussier amongst others were always prevalent despite the lack of live music. A frustrated musician, it wasn't until 1991 at the age of 24 when Peter commenced an ongoing dedication to radio broadcasting from various community radio stations on the NSW north coast using the unlikely pseudonym of Frank Presley.
He currently broadcasts his long running program 'Now's the Time' from Sydney's FM 99.3 on Sunday nights, which features local and international jazz and in depth interviews. |
| He commenced photographing jazz musicians at a very early age during performances at the annual Manly Jazz Festival. Inevitably, his curiosity for international jazz scenes took him to New York and Europe in the 1990's visiting celebrated environs such as the Village Vanguard, the Bimhaus, the New Morning and Ronnie Scotts where he photographed jazz greats such as Lionel Hampton, Sonny Rollins, Dave Holland, Cassandra Wilson and many others. |
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'Gold Man' is actually a photo of powerful trumpeter Scott Tinkler. This picture, I feel builds upon the theme of his bold album cover of the 1990's where his statuesque figure is emblazoned with gold paint.
'Minus Soup' is a recognition of the glowing trumpet playing of Warwick Alder, who appeared many times at the now defunct Sydney jazz club 'Soup Plus' and a lament for the loss of yet another stage on the Sydney jazz scene. |
Matthew Ottignon's face takes on elements of cubism in this photo entitled 'MO' and I liken his approach to improvisation in a similar way, when he expresses a minimalist theme from so many different perspectives.
Again at Birdland and James Ryan's silver horn becomes translucent in a fleeting sweep of sound. His facial silhouette, in contrast seems like a solid musical foundation against the rapidly moving sound from his horn. |  |  |
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This is a photo of Matt Keegan taken at Birdland record store. I entitled it 'Hold On' because to me, his saxophone is about to blast off. It was early in the lunch time gig and indeed he was about to take off. In full flight, he contorts his body in an elongated way and here his image is exaggerated to the extent where it conjures the idea of the horn as an extension of the man.
'Lead Man' is a picture of US great Dave Liebman who visited Australia a couple of years ago. While his is not a commanding physical presence on stage, his inspirational musical direction was enough to give me the title for this picture where I think his explosive range of ideas are reflected in this blaze of colour. |
"I come from a very musical family and I love many different styles of music. In the last eight years or so however, I have become particularly fond of jazz and blues especially the post 1950's era of American music and even a lot of contemporary jazz being played today.This led to the current infatuation with transferring some of my jazz heroes to large canvas or as works on paper, and has become the music of choice when I am painting or drawing. My interest in jazz even led to me taking up tenor and alto saxophone a few years ago….much to our cat's disapproval, I might add!
I find a lot of correlations between art and music and I have been fortunate enough to be able to mix both pleasures for my jazz-art series "Jazz Is Art, Art Is Jazz".
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 | Leith O'Malley was born into a family of musicians in Mount Barker, South Australia in 1960. Much to his mothers' discomfort, he arrived with pencil in hand.
His passion for drawing came at a very early age, being influenced by the illustrative style and cartoon work of American "Mad Magazine", and later by notable Australian newspaper cartoonist Paul Rigby, Michael Leunig and American Illustrator Rick Griffin.
Leith's early work in the city of Adelaide included freelance illustration contributions to various magazines, before moving to country South Australia in 1986. Leith made the transition from line to brush in the early nineties after workshops with "George Gittoes". George is a renowned Australian artist who has won the prestigious "Blake and Wynne" Prize for art and has also held the position of official Australian War Artist.
"Jazz is Art" |
Soon after these workshops, Leith co-founded the "Red Dust Contemporary Art Group" in Whyalla, exhibiting artwork throughout regional and metropolitan galleries.
Since this time Leith has continued painting and exhibiting his work, holding a number of commissions for artwork and being invited to contribute to several touring exhibitions. His artwork has been used to promote various Jazz events including Adelaide Jazz Festival and the "Rio-Havana-New York" Jazz Festival held in Moscow during November 2004. He was also the feature artist in a recent edition of the Australian art magazine "Artist's Palette" and provided the cover art for a 2006 American jazz compilation release.
"Night hawk", "Jazz man" |  |  |
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His traditional and computer illustrated work is also popular with both Australian and International media and business organizations.
Clients who have used Leith's digital artwork work have included the"Rio-Havana-New York" Jazz Festival (Moscow), Guenette Production Company (Los Angeles), Le'Mag Magazine (France), BHP (Australia), Tokyo Electron (Texas), Bristol University (UK) and even the United States Coast Guard.
"Ray Charles", "Miles Davis", "Coltrane" |
Leith is currently preparing artwork for a Sydney showing in 2006 along with more work for his ongoing series "Jazz Is Art, Art Is Jazz" which is a collection of both oil and pastel works with a jazz theme. A huge contemporary and traditional jazz fan, his love of this music led him to take up the tenor saxophone a few years ago and it is the music of choice when he is working on many of his paintings these days.
Much of Leith's work including previews of his current series can be found on his website.
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| "Jazz Girl"
"No jazz next 420km"
"Fat Duck" |
 | Linda O'Toole has always loved music, playing the guitar and singing just for fun. As a teenager Linda sang at weddings and school functions. So when the younger of her 2 boys started pre-school, instead of going back to nursing, she took some local watercolour classes and had some singing lessons to hone her skills. She discovered jazz quite late, in her 30's in fact. Within a few years Linda was out gigging at cafes, restaurants and doing concert gigs at the Brass Monkey, Cronulla with Tony Ansell and band. She learnt classical violin for 4 yrs before switching to jazz piano, which she's been learning for a few years now. Linda also writes songs and poetry and has written a few children's books, which she has yet to illustrate. |
"My passion is watercolour portraits and so it was a natural progression to paint jazz musicians and combine the two. I have been painting for about 15 years. After learning basic watercolour technique, life drawing andvarious master classes, I went on to teach myself portraiture."
Linda has exhibited works in the Doubly Gifted Exhibition, Waverley, The Royal Easter show, local art exhibitions and has had work in Knapp's cafe Jannali for 2 years. She started teaching watercolours in 2005, which has funded her first art exhibition (May, 2006) at Mary Place Gallery, Paddington .
"I have painted 24 paintings, mostly of people I know and have had the great pleasure to work with."
Works can be viewed on Linda's website |
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