The Jazzlab Dec 154

Old Country, New Country with special guest Sandy Evans (Syd) +

JRMA winner Lauren Tsamouras - Another Green World (Syd)

evening show 7.30PM

co-presented with the Melbourne Jazz Co-op

The Jazzlab Sunday Dec 14 doors 7pm Show 7.30pm

Tickets HERE $30/25 Bookings essential

Opening support : Monash emerging artist

Headline set 1 Lauren Tsamouras set 2 Old Country, New Country

Old Country, New Country + Sandy Evans (Syd)

 Sandy Evans saxophones

Peggy Lee cello

Paul Williamson trumpet

Dylan van der Schyff drums

Old Country, New Country is the collaborative ensemble of Peggy Lee (cello), Paul Williamson (trumpet), and Dylan van der Schyff (drums). The group employs a wide range of extended instrumental techniques, diverse formal concepts, and stylistic boundary crossing to explore the intersections of composition, free improvisation, and experimental music. Following on from their eponymously titled 2024 recording, this performance features a new iteration of the ensemble featuring a collaboration with internationally renowned saxophonist and composer Sandy Evans.  This performance will premiere new works that will feature on a new recording to be released in 2026.

https://sandyevans.com.au/

https://www.youtube.com/@sandyevansmusic

https://www.instagram.com/sandyevansmusic/

https://peggylee1.bandcamp.com/album/the-peggy-lee-band

https://dylanvanderschyff.bandcamp.com/music

https://paulwilliamson.bandcamp.com/

 Dr Sandy Evans OAM

Sandy Evans is an internationally renowned saxophonist and composer with a passion for improvisation and new music. She has played with and written for some of the most important groups in Australian jazz since the early 1980s and has toured extensively in Australia, Europe, Canada and Asia. She leads the Sandy Evans Trio and Sextet, and co-leads the Evans/Robson Quartet, Shakti Spirit and Magic Music. She co-led GEST8 and Clarion Fracture Zone. She is a member of Mara!, The catholics, Ten Part Invention and austraLYSIS. Her group Women and Children First was a ground-breaking ensemble during the 1980s, undertaking an epic seven-month tour by bus around Australia. She has performed with many leading jazz and improvising musicians including Andrea Keller, Freyja Garbett, Satsuki Odamura, Tessie Overmyer, Paul Grabowsky, Silke Eberhard, Ingrid Jensen, Judy Bailey, Andrew Robson, Adrian Sherriff, the Australian Art Orchestra, Indra Lesmana, Hamed Sadeghi, Chris Cody, Chloe Kim, Brenda Gifford, Jess Green, Ben Walsh’s Orkestra of the Underground, SNAP, Han Bennink and Terri Lyne Carrington. She was a featured soloist in Lloyd Swanton’s Ambon project. She performed in the award-winning show, The Theft of Sita, touring with the company in Australia, America and Europe.

Sandy has a keen interest in Indian classical music. She collaborates with Nadamhuni Gayatri Bharat in the ensemble Shakti Spirit. Her CD Cosmic Waves, featuring South Indian mridangam virtuoso Guru Kaaraikkudi Mani and Sruthi Laya, is released on Underscore Records. In 2014 Sandy was awarded a PhD from Macquarie University for practice-based research in Carnatic Jazz Intercultural music. In 2024, she performed in a collaboration with Dr Suresh Vaidyanathan and Adrian Sherriff. Bridge of Dreams, Sandy’s collaboration with Shubha Mudgal, Aneesh Pradhan and Sirens Big Band was a hit of the 2019 Sydney festival playing to a full house at City Recital Hall. She collaborates with Sarangan Sriranganathan and Bobby Singh and released the CD Kapture, a tribute to South African freedom fighter Ahmed Kathrada.

Sandy has an extensive composition portfolio. Commissions include work for the Mara! Big Band; Sky, Let the Rain Fall for Taikoz 20th Anniversary concert; The Drunkards Walk for the Monash Art Ensemble; Bridge of Dreams for the Sirens Big Band, Hindustani quartet and saxophone soloist; a suite in honour of legendary Australian saxophonist the late Bernie McGann; and the CD Rockpool Mirror based on photographs by Tall Poppies’ Belinda Webster. In 2013, Wesleyan University Press published Sandy’s composition Testimony, a major work about the life and music of Charlie Parker with poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa.

Sandy is an experienced teacher and has taught at UNSW, Macquarie University and in the Composition and Jazz Units at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.  She is an advocate for gender diversity in jazz, inaugurated the Jazz Improvisation Course for Young Women run annually by the Sydney Improvised Music Association, and is founding director of the Jann Rutherford Memorial Award, an initiative to support young female jazz musicians.

Awards and Honours Australian Jazz Bell Awards Hall of Fame, 2019; ART Music Award for Excellence in jazz for RockPoolMirror, 2018: Australia Council Fellowship 2017-2018, Churchill Fellowship 2014, Vice Chancellor’s Commendation for Academic Excellence, PhD Macquarie University, 2014 Performance of the Year with the AAO and Sruthi Laya, Art Music Awards 2013

AIR Award for Best Independent Jazz CD 2011, Order of Australia Medal 2010,

Bell Award for Australian Jazz Musician of The Year 2003, Young Australian Creative Fellowship 1996, 3 ARIA Awards, APRA Award, 2 Mo Awards

 Jann Rutherford Memorial Award winner : Lauren Tsamouris

Lauren Tsamouras - piano and compositions

Harry Birch - double bass

Another Green World, led by pianist Lauren Tsamouras with Harry Birch on double bass, delivers an intimate and meditative experience for both musicians and their audience through exploration of both pulsatile and improvisation-led compositions.

Lauren Tsamouras is a pianist, composer, and improviser based in Warrang/Sydney. Completing a bachelor degree in jazz piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2020 she was fortunate enough to learn from many renowned Australian jazz musicians such as Judy Bailey, Kevin Hunt, Carl Dewhurst, Matt MacMahon, Steve Barry and Emma Stephenson. Since then, she has become a part of many burgeoning jazz and improvised music projects within the Sydney scene. She leads and composes for her contemporary jazz duo Another Green World, whose debut album Mytera was released in March 2023. In addition to her own project, Lauren performs regularly with a range of ensembles around Sydney including Pharos (a big band celebrating women musicians and composers in jazz led by Hannah James), Volant (led by saxophonist Matt Ottignon), and Home Is (led by saxophonist/flautist Hinano Fujisaki). She has also had the pleasure of working with renowned double bassist and improviser, Clayton Thomas, through their new trio LUSH (piano, double bass and vibraphone) alongside Niki Johnson as well as participating in Clayton’s ensemble Sound The Alarm helping to raise awareness and money for charities in Gaza.

 This year, 2025, Lauren was given the opportunity to record a tribute album to composer and jazz pianist, Judy Bailey, with her good friend and band-mate Tom Avgenicos (trumpet). Adapting and reimagining a selection of Judy’s works for piano and trumpet +FX duo, they are set to release this album on ABC Jazz later this year.

 In 2021, she was nominated for the Jann Rutherford Memorial Award, and in 2025 she became its recipient, supporting the recording of Another Green World’s forthcoming second album. She was also featured as an ABC Jazz Artist in Residence in early 2025, presenting original solo piano works alongside a selection of jazz repertoire, broadcast on the radio and social media. In October 2025 she will be presenting her original work as SIMA’s October Artist in Residence at the Vanguard in Newtown alongside reputable musicians such as Hilary Geddes, Brendan Clark, Jacques Emery and Ashley Stoneham.

@laurentsamouras

@anothergreenworld_band