Music / Paul Grabowsky, The Jazz Haus Canberra. At Tuggeranong Arts Centre, July 12. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

Paul Grabowsky has received eight ARIAs, the Melbourne Prize for Music, an HC Coombs Fellowship and an Order of Australia. His piano set featured music from his album Solo.

While also founder of the Australian Art Orchestra, Grabowsky has many movie music scores to his name. Perhaps his most loved movie score is for the 1992 film, The Last Days of Chez Nous.

In the newly refurbished theatre in the Tuggeranong Arts Centre, the atmosphere was intimate. For these gigs, they call it The Jazz Haus. Background photos pay tribute to jazz greats, Ellington, Mingus and they were in great company with Grabowsky on the baby grand. The full house, snugly packed in, some with wine, but all with a love of jazz and fine music. And that’s what we got.

After a short intro, his first piece, Angel, written for his daughter, sat between jazz, classical and movie music, and those styles best sum up his compositions. Under his fingers, he has all the notes, chords, and timing of a specialist pianist. But in his head and heart, there’s another world of sound creation going on.

Like Keith Jarrett, his compositions are unique, but there’s a smoothness, a reflective quality that makes his music dreamlike, pensive and performative. He creates dissonance and consonance at the same time.

A piece called October followed. Written for the Hush Foundation, which brings calm and optimism to patients in hospitals, this work, fittingly gentle for a children’s ward. This lyrical piece, mellow throughout, created a dreamy atmosphere.

Grabowsky does what so many composers try to do, and that’s create unity and difference at the same time. His musical language is something that few gain the knowledge to do. We all try, but Grabowsky succeeds.

To show he’s not just a composer, the next piece was Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk. Without a note or chart in front of him, Grabowsky recreated this classic in his own style, and it was all style.

The gig went for two 45-minute sets, the second half began with a piece by Duke Ellington, In a Sentimental Mood, made famous in a recording with John Coltrane, but this was played in a Grabowsky style, of course.

Then a work inspired by Ornette Coleman was, as Grabowsky said, full of pyrotechnics. Titled simply Cole, it was alive and jumping, to say the least. A million notes, styles and ideas all rushing at the audience. What a treat.

Grabowsky ended with a touch of Bach and his Goldberg Variations, with Grabowsky mixed in, and then an encore called Stars Apart. This was a special night.