Myele Manzanza drumming at the Jazz Cafe, London.

For the longtime players and keepers of the faith, jazz – much like folk, country, rock, and increasingly, hip-hop and electronica – never really goes away. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the genre, one of the great cultural traditions the United States has shared with the world, has deep roots dating back to the late 1800s. Over a century later, it continues to be a mode of playing and a source of influence for generation after generation of New Zealand musicians.

Louisa Williamson: her debut album What Dreams May Come featured a band of nearly 20 musicians. - Reed Reid

If you search for jazz on AudioCulture, you’ll find quite a lot of writing about various 20th century New Zealand jazz musicians. What about this century? Here are 10 significant Aotearoa New Zealand jazz records, one per year, from the decade just past. As it turns out, the mid-to-late 2010s and early 2020s have been a very promising stretch for our local jazz scenes; the musicians operate in genres a step or two removed, while drinking from the same wellsprings.

I’m not a formalist, so not everything in this list is straight-ahead jazz. However, amidst the more experimental, or genre-crossing fusion records I have selected, there are always moments that glide back towards the conventions of tradition. It’s pleasing to note that most of the acts included here have been acknowledged with wins or nominations at the Aotearoa Music Awards and the APRA Best Jazz Composition Award. And, if not, the music still unquestionably speaks for itself.

Myele Manzanza – OnePointOne (Live at The Blue Whale) (2016)

Myele Manzanza drumming at the Jazz Cafe, London.

After departing from the future soul group Electric Wire Hustle in the early 2010s, Wellington drummer, composer, producer and DJ Myele Manzanza went on to a range of other endeavours, including touring with the Detroit dance music legend Theo Parrish. In 2014, Manzanza took a bet on himself and recorded his second album, OnePointOne, live at The Blue Whale venue in Los Angeles.

Featuring Mark de Clive-Lowe on keyboards, Ben Shepherd on bass, a string quartet led by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and the vocalists Nia Andrews and Charlie K, across OnePointOne, Manzanza blends traditional jazz and string composition with hip-hop and soul. In the decade since OnePointOne appeared on First Word Records, Manzanza has released half a dozen albums and relocated to London, where he’s been finding his way in the open-eared UK jazz scene.

 

Salon Kingsadore – Instant Compositions (2017)

Salon Kingsadore at Golden Dawn, Ponsonby, Auckland, May 2013

When Sarang Bang Records released the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland ensemble Salon Kingsadore’s fifth album, Instant Compositions, in 2017, they were 17 years into a journey through avant-garde jazz, instrumental psychedelia, surf rock, and cinematic exotica. At the time, the group’s line-up was Sarang Bang Records boss Gianmarco Liguori (guitar), Tom Ludvigson (keyboards), Hayden Sinclair (bass) and Steven Tait (drums), who abandoned pre-conceived song structures and embraced improvised composition.

On release, AudioCulture contributor and Elsewhere editor Graham Reid noted the album was “Weirdly and enjoyably psychedelic in the most literal, consciousness-changing definition of the word,” before describing it as “brain and shapeshifting music with a cosmic intent.” In a testament to how deftly they balanced experimentation and groove, ‘IC-3’ off Instant Compositions found its way into the hands of the tastemaking UK DJ Gilles Peterson, who featured it on his BBC Radio 6 show in 2018.

 

Surly – Trip To Warsaw (2018)

In the mid-2010s, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland producer and DJ Scott Ludvigson, aka Surly (the son of Tom Ludvigson), found himself revisiting the sounds of late-20th-century Polish jazz and jazz electronica. Inspired, he blended ideas from those moments with the then-rising dance sounds of Chicago juke and footwork, ultimately creating his breakout release, Trip To Warsaw, for the European labels Polish Juke and Astigmatic Records.

Across six tracks, Ludvigson paired the melodies and basslines of jazz with robust electronic rhythms and dance-song structures, leading to support from media outlets and radio stations across the US, Europe and the UK, including Vice, Bandcamp Daily, NTS and Radar Radio. One of the high points of the record was ‘THIRTEEN’, a fascinating song in which he slowly transforms an acoustic ballroom jazz loop into a huge bass-driven groove. It’s amazing witnessing what it does to a dancefloor.

 

Dixon Nacey – The Edge of Chaos (2019)

When Dixon Nacey made his debut as a band leader in 2019 with his album, The Edge of Chaos, the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland jazz guitar session player was three years into his run as the artistic and musical director for the Coca-Cola Christmas in the Park show. Such is the man’s range.

Released through Rattle Records, The Edge of Chaos showcases Nacey’s highly expressive playing alongside a band featuring Roger Manins (saxophone), Kevin Field (piano), Olivier Holland (bass), Andy Keegan (drums), and Jonathan Leung and Chelsea Prastiti (vocals).

Made up of seven, impressionistic guitar-led pieces that remind me of 80s Pat Metheny, The Edge of Chaos often feels like it’s literally operating on the titular edge. It sometimes teeters, but never truly tumbles from organised noise into noise alone. In 2020, the album was awarded Best Jazz Artist Tui at the Aotearoa Music Awards.

 

Lucien Johnson – Wax///Wane (2020)

Lucien Johnson. - Publicity photo

Although he began performing in jazz groups in the late 1990s, Te Whanganui-a-tara saxophonist, composer, and band leader Lucien Johnson didn’t fully arrive until he released his second album, Wax///Wane, in 2020. Having spent two decades diving into African music, free jazz, and straight-ahead trad jazz, Johnson’s sophomore effort captured the shift when he finally stopped worrying about impressing with virtuosity and got out of the way of his songs. The results felt celestial in aspiration, but they were still accessible, relaxing and moving.

After he let it loose, Wax///Wane received rave reviews, with radio station France Musique calling it “Bewitching and Astonishing” and London Jazz News describing it as “Mystical, a touch retro and increasingly spellbinding.” Closer to home, it won him the 2021 APRA Amcos New Zealand Best Jazz Composer award and a nomination for Best Jazz Artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards.

 

Devils Gate Outfit – Jazz from the Underground Nightclubs of Aotearoa Vol. 5 (2021)

When Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington jazz ensemble Devils Gate Outfit released Jazz from the Underground Nightclubs of Aotearoa Vol. 5 through the Kiwijahzz label in 2021, they’d been entertaining late-night audiences in the capital for three years. Recorded live at a concert held in the capital’s Meow venue directly after the 2021 Covid lockdown, the six-song album showcases a range of adventurous compositions inspired by the city’s storied south coast.

As John Fenton’s JazzLocal32 blog observed, while noting echoes of Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis in the music, “The album is bursting with restless spirits, and I am not surprised that such a powerful genie was let out of the bottle so quickly.” Drummer and composer Anthony Donaldson shines brightly in Devils Gate Outfit, as do Tom Callwood (double bass) and Steve Roche (cornet/baritone horn/casio). There’s a who’s who of players on here, and they very much deliver.

 

Louisa Williamson – What Dreams May Come (2022)

For her debut album, What Dreams May Come, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington composer and woodwind player Louisa Williamson went big, pulling together close to 20 musicians to perform a set of compositions equal parts big band jazz, ambient and modern classical.

Before release, Williamson had been exploring the works of the composers Brian Eno and Maria Schneider. As she put it in 2022, “As a musician, my role within the wider community has become clearer throughout the pandemic. I feel a responsibility to create and interpret beauty out of tragedy, and reflect the times we are living in.”

The following year, she won the APRA 2023 Best Jazz Composition Award for What Dreams May Come’s extended opening track, ‘A Dream Within A Dream’. At the time, the judges described it as, “Both peaceful and full of surprise ... imaginative and daring.”

 

The Circling Sun – Spirits (2023)

The Circling Sun in 2023. Back, from left: Cameron Allen, Guy Harrison; middle: J Y Lee, Julian Dyne, Finn Scholes; in front: Ben Turua. - APRA

After a very long development spent playing jazz residencies in inner-city venues and nightclubs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland band The Circling Sun made a big splash in 2023 with their debut album Spirits. Over six to eight tracks (depending on whether you went for the vinyl or digital version), they showed off a world-class set of compositions written in the spirit of spiritual, modal, and Latin jazz, winning over tastemakers from Tokyo to London and back again.

In the words of RNZ host Tony Stamp, “The musical knowledge clearly held by members of The Circling Sun informs their rich compositions: the many iterations of jazz history filtered through one South Pacific ensemble.” They absolutely won’t, but if The Circling Sun wanted to, they could rest easy knowing they’ve made a real contribution. Once Spirits starts playing, it’s easy to kick back and enjoy the ride.

 

Umar Zakaria – Family Music (2024)

Umar Zakaria is the classic New Zealander who is also a citizen of the world. Born in Singapore, he grew up in Ōtautahi Christchurch, before studying jazz double bass in Wellington, Texas, and Boston. In 2018, he won Best Jazz Artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards for his first composer album, Fearless Music, a record imbued with his hope and optimism for the future. These days he lives in Naarm Melbourne.

Recorded at Dr. Lee Prebble’s Surgery Recording Studio in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Zakaria’s sophomore effort, Family Music, sees him playing alongside Elizabeth Hocking (alto saxophone), Louisa Williamson (tenor saxophone), Ayrton Foote (piano), and Shaun Anderson (drums).

Dedicated to the bonds of love, support, acceptance, belief, and safety that make great music-making possible in the first place, Family Music ripples with a leafy, autumnal feeling. This isn’t jazz from New York’s Central Park, but I have listened to it while walking through Wellington’s Central Park.

 

Clear Path Ensemble – Black Sand (2025)

Another New Zealander currently stationed in Naarm Melbourne, Cory Champion is a drummer, percussionist, composer, producer and DJ who found his musical footing in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington. Over the last five years, Champion has written his name into the Antipodean jazz history books with his Clear Path Ensemble band.

Last year he launched Clear Path Ensemble’s third album, Black Sand, at a listening party in a community hall on a hi-fi sound system he built himself. He designed the cover art, paid to press the vinyl, and distributed the record by hand. When Gilles Peterson got hold of the music, he played Champion’s song ‘Cascade d’Ars’ on his BBC Radio 6 show in the UK.

‘Cascade d’Ars’ went on to win Champion the 2025 APRA Best Jazz Composition Award. But what does Black Sand sound like? It’s a glorious melange of jazz, ambient, minimalist composition, and new age music that’s just as beautiful as the French waterfall he named ‘Cascade d’Ars’ after.

 

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