Jazz fans are in for a treat as trio return

GOING NOVA: The John Rae Trio go nova on stage during their debut performance at King Street Live earlier this month. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

Outstanding Kiwi jazz group The John Rae Trio return to King Street Live in Masterton tonight.

Expatriate Scots drummer Rae, a top flight composer, musician and band leader, will join forces for the Masterton concert with vaunted saxophonist, flautist, and composer Lucien Johnson and double bass player Patrick Bleakley, says King Street Live spokeswoman Ange Kalogeropoulos.

The trio play King Street Live from 8pm and entry is free. The group played their debut performance at the venue earlier this month.

Rae, based since 2006 in Wellington, has continued to stage live performances since finishing the Creative New Zealand Jack C. Richards composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music in 2010.

Rae was leader and composer for The Troubles, a premier Kiwi jazz nonet that initially had been an earlier incarnation of the present trio.

He has also been working and recording with Kiwi pianist Mike Nock and the New Zealand String Quartet, Ms Kalogeropoulos said.

Rae recorded his first album at 16 alongside acclaimed saxophonist Tommy Smith and has since recorded over 30 albums as a leader and sideman, including the 2003 and 2004 BBC Jazz Album of the Year.

Johnson, a saxophonist and composer from Wellington, teaches saxophone at the New Zealand School of Music where he originally studied jazz and earned a Masters degree in composition.

Johnson lived in Paris for six years where he formed a trio with veteran American free jazz bass player Alan Silva and Japanese drummer Makoto Sato.

He composed music for plays and short films, toured India with a clown troop, wrote music for a theatre show in Haiti, and in New Zealand played with The Black Seeds, The Yoots, Lord Echo, Jonathan Crayford Quartet, Hollie Smith, Leila Adu, Norman Meehan and Natalia Mann, as well as leading various groups under his own name.

Bleakley has been one of the most sought after bass players in New Zealand since the 1970s.

His baptism of fire came through meeting iconic musician and actor Bruno Lawrence who soon inducted Bleakley into his band Blerta.

During the 70s he played with several other well known groups such as Mammal, Rough Justice and Spatz and was for a time in the quartet of leading Australian saxophonist Bernie McGann.

Bleakley took a break from music before he returned to playing bass in the 1990s, touring with Lawrence and pianist Jonathan Crayford in the band Jazzmin, Ms Kalogeropoulos said.

He has also played as part of The Razorblades, Sanctus and Village of the Idiots.