John Bostock - Composer. Pianist.

| Sweeping Victory on Home Ground |

by Barak Weiss

| The Opposite of Postcards |

by Ben Shalev, Haarez, May-2005

| An Unexpected Twist |

by Ben Shalev, Haarez

| Sweeping Victory on Home Ground |

by Barak Weiss

Before a warm and supportive audience, John Bostock’s Trio performed at their home ground last night and won a sweeping victory.
John Bostock plays music of watercolors, melodic and romantic, that gently touches sensations and emotions. Bostock’s music leaves a sense of a veiled dream, of a story told behind a fine and romantic mist.
His classical training is very evident in his playing, especially in the way he attacks the keys. He plays exactly and elegantly, producing a rounded sound. In his playing one hears the beginning, middle and end of every note.
His program contained a number of standards and fascinating original pieces, some of which appeared on his first disc “Journey to Gynthia”. As the evening progressed it seemed as if Bostock overcame is initial hesitation and his playing became freer and more confident.
In my view, the excellent performance of the arrangement of “Flow My Tears” by the Renaissance composer John Dowland, was the point at which the performance changed status from good to excellent. It was as though the positive feedback which they received from the audience for this unusual choice of a jazz format injected new energy into the trio.
From this point excellent performances followed one another, for instance “Ant’s Dance”, “Ballad” and “One for Albert” written in honor of Albert Beger with whom Bostock played for several years and recorded two albums.
As an encore the trio played “The Ant and the Elephant” with a wonderful and most unusual arco solo by Ora Boazson-Horev. Here I mention that Boazson-Horev was an excellent partner for Bostock during the entire performance both as accompanist and soloist. A pity that the microphone placed on her contrabass produced an electric bass sound losing the woody nature of the contrabass.
At the end of the evening, the audience left the hall with wide smiles on their faces.
Can there be a better criticism for a performance?

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| The Opposite of Postcards |

by Ben Shalev, Haarez, May-2005

John Bostock's new album is called "Journey to Gythia." "Gythia," he says, "is a place in Greece, in the Peloponnese that he visited a few days before he came on aliyah to Israel - 18 years ago. "I took a small local bus there and traveled from one beautiful place to another. That's the whole story. When I wrote the music that later became the motif of the album, this mental picture suddenly came back to me."

The not-quite-a-story about the trip to Gythia is a good illustration of the spirit of Bostock's excellent album, which is the first jazz disc by the pianist and composer, most of whose activity takes place in the arena of contemporary classical music. "Journey to Gythia" is a sensitive and restrained musical journey, without any hair-raising experiences or breathtaking landscapes. Bostock's works are the opposite of postcards: sketches of feelings and emotions, based on patient observation and profound attentiveness.

Tomorrow, Bostock's work for a string quartet, called "Galut" (Exile), will be performed by the Israeli String Quartet for Contemporary Music, at the Felicia Blumenthal Center in Tel Aviv. Next Friday, May 27, Bostock's jazz trio will perform at the Jerusalem Cinematheque as part of the series of performances called "The Swedish Chef."

The new album, which is available at the Tel Aviv stores Jazz Ba'ozen and Jazzland, was recorded in 2004 with drummer Danny Benedict and contrabassist Guy Levy, but the works included in it were written about 10 years ago. Bostock recorded them shortly after they were written, with other partners, but decided to shelve the finished product. "I had too many unfulfilled expectations at the time," he says.

Last year, after completing a doctorate in composition, he decided to try again. "This time we recorded with a sense of freedom, without expectations. We wanted to do something relaxed. Simply to play and to see where it went. A lot of it came from the gut, it's not something intellectual."

Bostock's assertion notwithstanding, the beauty of "Journey to Gythia" seems to lie in the combination of the emotional and intellectual. As opposed to Bostock's modernistic music, which he himself admits is liable to annoy the listener at times, the works in "Journey to Gythia" are easy listening. "When you play jazz, you can be lyrical, even romantic, things that are not part of the language of modern music," he says.

However, his classical training is obvious in several of the works, which are played in a rhythm that is not entirely jazzy. "It's true, these are not standard works," says Bostock. "That's how it emerges in my playing, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Going wild with Albert Beger

Bostock, 51, was born in Australia. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, training to be a piano teacher, and in the evenings he played electric piano in a jazz and rock ensemble.

"I think that I didn't make much of an impression. I didn't care much, either. At that point, I already had my eye on avant-garde," he says.

Later he went to study jazz in New York and then tried to settle in London. That was in 1985, the year of the great miners' strike, and Bostock says that he didn't want to live in such a depressing place. His next destination was Kibbutz Matsuba, where he came as a volunteer. In the kibbutz he met his future wife and since then has been in Israel. In the late 1980s, he began to study at the Rubin Music Academy in Tel Aviv.

"I think that jazz brought me to modern music. Or to be more precise, the desire to expand my language of improvisation brought me to composition," he says. The route that he designated for himself was very strict. He accepted the restrictions of avant-garde, for example, the rules of serial music, out of an awareness of the fact that the discovery of his independent voice as a composer would be a long and gradual process, and until then he would be better off becoming part of some tradition.

After completing his bachelor's degree at the academy, he met jazz saxophonist Albert Beger, joined the quartet founded by Beger, and recorded two albums with him. "During that period I made a clear separation between my two careers. On the one hand, I was a serious composer, and on the other, I went wild on stage with Albert," says Bostock. Anyone who attended the performances of the ensemble cannot but wonder at the way in which the pianist recalls them. Beger certainly went wild, but his cooperation with Bostock was so successful just because the pianist maintained restraint, both in his playing and in his stage behavior.

Bostock has twice been awarded the ACUM prize (ACUM is the Hebrew acronym for the Israeli society of authors, composers and music publishers), and leading orchestras here have played his works.

Has he found his unique voice?

"It's a process," he replies. "I'm still searching. When I find it, it's always after the fact. I hear things that I've done and see a common denominator in them. Something of my own that emerges unintentionally."

Recently, alongside a certain weakening of the avant-garde element of Bostock's music, there is an increasing infiltration of jazz elements.

"The true test is whether it happens in an unconscious manner," says Bostock. "I'm still not certain. In any case, there is no doubt that consciously, I'm doing it more and more." For example, the work "Music for Eight Instruments," which will be performed this year by the 21st Century Ensemble, is based on a jazz song by Bostock, and includes parts that are partially improvised. "The greatest problem is to get a classical ensemble to play with a sense of jazz. You can't write swing into the partitura," says Bostock, beginning to play a work of his, "Concerto for Chamber Music," which is influenced by "Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis and was performed several years ago by the Israeli ensemble "Musica Nova."

While listening to the performance, he shifts uneasily in his seat. It is obvious that he is not totally satisfied. "If I could only bring Tony Williams into the classical ensemble," he says with a smile, "it could have been perfect." (Tony Williams was Davis's regular drummer in the 1960s.)

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| An Unexpected Twist |

by Ben Shalev, Haarez

Not every day do we come across a musician who having recently released a beautiful album, appears on the stage with the same materials and makes them more beautiful still. This is what happened last night at the excellent performance by pianist John Bostock at the Tel-Aviv Jazz Festival.
The live performance of Bostock’s compositions did not differ essentially from
that of the album. The reason for the overall upgrading in the effect of the music lay principally in the inherent advantages of a live performance over recorded music: the immediacy of the event, the obvious rapport between the musicians (Bostock was supported by the contrabassist - Ora Boazson-Horev, and the drummer - Danny Benedikt), and principally the feedback from the audience and the resulting
sense of confidence which it gave the musicians. This last effect is probably what lies behind another advantage of the live performance over the album, a certain improvement in Bostock’s improvisation.
Bostock’s greatest strength lies in his compositions, which despite their clarity and transparency always conceal within them some unexpected twist. And in contrast to other musicians whose various compositions are really variations on an identical
theme, Bostock hates to repeat himself. Each composition which he and his partners played in the performance differed from the previous one both in sound and emphasis.
“Journey to Gynthia” for example, is a fine attempt to reconstruct in reflective tones, observation of a Mediterranean landscape. “Flowers for Albert” is a relatively stormy tribute to saxophonist Albert Beger, who formerly employed Bostock in his first quartet. (Beger was present in the audience and was visibly moved when Bostock presented this piece)
“Flow My Tears” is a composition by the 16th century composer, John Dowland, which Bostock arranged in a most original way for piano trio, and “Ballad”, the most challenging piece of the evening, is the skeleton of a modern classical composition for eight instruments which will be premiered next month in a performance by the “21st Century Ensemble”.

Here is yet another facet which distinguishes Bostock from other Jazz musicians: they base themselves on a tradition of several decades, his inspiration derives from a tradition of 500 years.

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