SAM
GILL
Coursed Waters
Sam Gill - alto saxophone & compositions
Novak Manojlovic - piano
Jacques Emery - double bass
James McLean - drums
Coursed Waters is an improvising quartet led by saxophonist & composer Sam Gill. A cross-city collaboration, the band features Melbourne-based drummer James McLean alongside Sydney’s Novak Manojlovic on piano and Jacques Emery on bass.
The band has played a number of shows in Sydney and Melbourne at venues including Venue 505, The Jazz Lab, Project 107, Uptown Jazz Cafe & Foundry616.
The quartet's first album, Many Altered Returns, was released in April 2018 on Earshift Music. The album's six tracks feature expanses of open improvisation within provocative multi-sectional compositions, moving between moments of extreme density through to whispering calm.
"This is a stimulating slab of prickly composition and guided improvisation. Gill and his partners have a great feel for each other..."
"From the very first note of the album the listener is immersed in the band’s unique creative conception… the group most often acts as a single expressive unit, each member improvising and responsively co-inspiring…”
“One of the most interesting features of Many Altered Returns is the cohabitation of composition and improvisation. The two worlds can sometimes be at odds with one another, but, here, they complete each other and work in a sort of supernatural synergy.”
– Can This Even Be Called Music
“These six dense narrations rely heavily on atmosphere, championing ambiguity as the quartet probes labyrinthine paths… Gill [frees] up unorthodox phrases packed with Dolphy-esque intervals. He explores outside conventional bounds…”