By Robert Vale
Musicians Hayden Chisholm and Jonathan Crayford, both New Zealand born, are contemporaries whose diverse careers in the past 30 and 35 years respectively have played out largely in foreign lands. Given their acknowledged virtuosity and their readiness to undertake the most challenging of projects it is surprising that until quite recently their paths have not crossed.
Chisholm, whose principal instrument is the alto saxophone, also plays the shruti box, a type of harmonium of Indian origin, which produces a drone like sound; the koauau, a traditional Maori flute, and the bagpipes.
As a young man he left New Zealand in the mid-1990s to study in Cologne, Germany and subsequently in India, Japan, the Balkans and many other countries. While studying Carnatic music in Chennai he developed a method of micro-tonal fingering for woodwind instruments, producing split scales using quarter tones. This is now a playing technique sometimes employed by jazz musicians as a vehicle for improvisation and can be heard on many of Chisholm’s recordings.
The 2019 album Saffron, performed by his trio, Unwind, is a good example. Such is the interest of other musicians of varying genres that each year since 2006 Chisholm has conducted a six-day student workshop on the technique at the annual Agios Laurentios music festival in Greece.
In addition to his 23 albums Chisholm has composed for theatre, art installations and documentary films and directed an opera.
Crayford’s principal instrument is the piano. In 1990 he started a 21-year residency in New York City and subsequently lived and performed in several European countries, Cuba and Brazil before returning to New Zealand. Like that of Chisholm, Crayford’s musicality is diverse. He has undertaken extensive composer commissions for Radio New Zealand as well as NZ cinema and composed for Flamenco, poetry recitals and circus performances.
He has also reinterpreted the music of classical composers Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Gustav Mahler and Maurice Ravel. ‘I’m not a classical player but I love playing this music and have found a way of doing it that excites me,’ he says. More broadly, ‘It’s the excitement of new projects and the risks associated with being in unfamiliar places that lure me … it is like a rebirth.’
The recently recorded album Release and Return has brought Hayden Chisholm and Jonathan Crayford together for the first time, playing seven compositions that speak of the human condition and of nature. The playing is particularly intimate and responsive, akin somewhat to two artists at the same canvas. The flutters of Chisholm’s semi-tonal saxophone and shruti box deliver strong feelings of romanticism and spirituality, bound together by the deftness of Crayford’s piano artistry. For some the album will be a must have.
It can be previewed at: rattle.co.nz/catalogue/releases/release-and-return