When envisioning the Riverina, with its flat plains, venous irrigation systems and never-ending groves and vineyards, jazz music is rarely there.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
For guitarist Hilary Geddes both the genre and the region informed much of her creative experience growing up in Griffith.
"My interest in jazz started when I was in high school," says Geddes
"I went to Griffith High [now Murrumbidgee Regional High School] and all the students were playing music by ear and jamming, so I did that too."
That creative expression paid off for the guitar whiz, who claimed the prestigious Freedman Jazz Fellowship in 2021 and even had a song by her other band, The Buoys, featured in the 2022 triple j Hottest 100.
Geddes is now taking her jazz band, the aptly named Hilary Geddes Quartet, on a tour across regional NSW in support of her critically acclaimed debut album Parkside.
The band will be stopping in Griffith for a show on June 21, which Geddes says has been long overdue.
READ MORE
"Growing up in the Riverina, and in Griffith, it's always been a dream of mine to take my jazz band back home to perform music for the community that shaped and made me," she says.
Besides her versatile guitar playing, which seamlessly switches between soothing and sophisticated, much of Geddes' music has been informed by the Riverina and the events she experienced growing up, including the Millennium Drought.
"It's about evoking a particular place at a particular time," she says.
"I'm trying to evoke through sound that sense of heat that was so formative to my childhood there where it just didn't rain for years."
Geddes also says she was influenced by her parents who often had CD's on rotation at home, her childhood piano teacher, and the music of genre-bending guitar virtuoso Ry Cooder.
Even fellow students at left a creative imprint on the young musician.
"To this day some of the best musicians I ever encountered were at school with me at Griffith High," she says.
Geddes has been honing her craft in various locales since 2013, including her current home in Sydney, as well as Germany where she lived for a year between between 2016 and 2017.
However, she says she hasn't forgotten the Riverina and still uses its distinct characteristics to inform much of her songwriting, particularly while living in the parochial climate of Sydney and the recent lockdowns.
"To be able to play again is such a euphoric feeling," she says.
"The Buoys recently played a festival on the weekend in Port Macquarie and to be back in that space again and playing to those people, it doesn't get any better.
"I can only imagine when the Quartet tours the Riverina in June it's going to be that feeling but heightened because of the personal connection."
With another jazz album in the works and more touring planned, Geddes is fully embracing the musician life and is keen to showcase her band's songwriting and technical chops to the hometown crowd.
"People can expect their imaginations of what they consider to be music to be a bit stretched," she says.
"I hope people really enjoy it because we plan on having a good time up there."
The Hilary Geddes Quartet will be playing the Cellar Door at the Piccolo Family Farm on Tuesday, June 21.
Tickets are available through Humanitix.
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Bookmark www.areanews.com.au
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram
- Follow us on Google News