A Tribute to Sean Baxter: Baxter/Honeybrook @ MIUC 12-05-09

Baxter/Honeybrook MIUC 12-5-2009

Vale Sean Baxter 1970-2020: For Those About to Junk-Grind, We Salute You

Sean Baxter (drums)

Lloyd Honeybrook (alto saxophone)

Make It Up Club

Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival 

12th May 2009

 

In memorium Sean Baxter: the man, the instant composer, the gleeful violator of idiomatic conventions, the fierce advocate for deep listening; the curator, the punk MC and champion swearer, the junk percussionist, the jazz virtuoso, the educator and essayist, the not only good but prize-winning egg. Here in free blast mode with saxophonist Lloyd Honeybrook. In the tradition of Ali and Coltrane, DeJohnette and Surman, Brotzmann and Bennink, Flaherty and Corsano … Graves and Zorn.  Sean’s ghost notes and rolls provoke Honeybrook into Ayler-esque action like futuristic tattoos. The kit and its extensions freed from beat rigidity to engage with texture, the horn to explore a sonoverse of avian mimicry and hominid protest. 

For over 20 years, Sean helped curate a venue that gives Melbourne a worthy parallel to the loft spaces of Downtown New York or London's Cafe Oto.  Zorn's game pieces or grindcore-informed avant-metal; harsh noise or dreamy modular synthscapes; electroacoustic assemblages or free bop explorations by some of Australia's finest jazz musicians; unfettered sonic excavation was always paramount at MIUC under Sean's stewardship, and continues so. Baxter brought a multifaceted approach to musical practice with collaborators as diverse in their multi-disciplinary pedigrees as Anthony Pateras, Dave Brown, Faust, Philip Samartzis, Valerio Tricoli, Adam Simmons, and Kris Wanders. His humour, kindness, and creative brilliance is sorely missed.