Tim Hopkins, (born in Auckland, New Zealand) is an Australian jazz musician who won the Australian National Jazz Award at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz in 1993.
Growing up in Brisbane, Australia, Hopkins had planned a career in graphic arts, but took up the saxophone at age 15. He graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and performed with Australian jazz musicians Vince Jones, Paul Grabowsky, James Morrison, Don Burrows, New Zealand musicians Mike Nock, Kim Patterson, Kevin Field, Frank Gibson Jnr, Nathan Haines, Mark de Clive Lowe, Andy Browne, Roger Fox, King Kapisi and Gray Bartlett. Other credits include You Am I, Kate Ceberano, Ed Kuepper, Doug Williams, Midnight Oil, Jackie Orszaczky.
His debut album in 1993 Good Heavens coincided with winning the National Jazz Saxophone Award at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz in Australia. [1] By the end of the 1990s he had recorded another four CDs, toured South East Asia, Canada and Europe.
In 1999, on an Australia Arts Council grant, he studied with saxophonist George Garzone in New York City. While there, he played with Jim Black and Seamus Blake, and wrote, arranged and performed with an ensemble called Phydia featuring a string quartet with a standard jazz quartet line up.
In 2000, Hopkins moved back to New Zealand and began recording and compiling his 6th solo CD Hear Now After. The first single Loophole features TV presenter Russell Harrison on vocals, rapper King Kapisi, percussionist Miguel Fuentes and Hopkins on an assortment of instruments. Loophole was included on a NZ On Air compilation disc and features a black and white video directed by the NZ Independent Film Company.
Hopkins helped to start the Heineken Green Room Sessions in New Zealand with DJ Clarke and The Gordon Bennett Project. GBP have also played at the Heineken Open, headlined in Malaysia and Singapore at several big events and released a double CD recorded at Millton Vineyards & Winery in Gisborne.
Hear Now After, which was released in March 2008, features many of the musicians listed above and other players from New Zealand and Australia, including appearances by drummer Tony Hopkins, Mike Nock, Max Stowers, Dixon Nacey, Aaron Coddel, Jonathan Zwartz and Sean Wayland.
Jazz music has a long history in Australia. Over the years jazz has held a high-profile at local clubs, festivals and other music venues and a vast number of recordings have been produced by Australian jazz musicians, many of whom have gone on to gain a high profile in the international jazz arena.
Michael Anthony Nock is a New Zealand jazz pianist, currently based in Australia.
Dale Barlow is a jazz saxophonist, flute player and composer. He has a Masters of Music degree begun at City College New York under Ron Carter and completed at ANU Canberra. He has received ARIA Awards, Album of the Year/ Jazz performer of the year/ International Artist of the Year/ Bicentennial Artist of the Year, four Mo Awards and grants.
Frank Gibson Jr. is a New Zealand jazz drummer and drum tutor. His father, also Frank Gibson, was drummer and leader of the first rock’n’roll band in the country, Frank Gibson's Rock’n’Rollers.
Roger Frampton was an Australian jazz pianist, saxophonist, composer, and educator. Based in Sydney, he played a major role in shaping the evolution of Australian jazz. He taught at the Jazz Studies course at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and also became Head of Jazz Studies during the late 1970s.
The Melbourne International Jazz Festival is an annual jazz music festival first held in Melbourne, Australia in 1998. The Festival takes place in concert halls, arts venues, jazz clubs and throughout the streets of Melbourne.
John Kenneth Pochée, OAM was an Australian jazz drummer and bandleader. As drummer, bandleader and organizer he played a major role in the history of Australian jazz.
Miklós József "Jackie" Orszáczky was a Hungarian-Australian musician, arranger, vocalist and record producer. His musical styles included jazz, blues, R&B, funk and progressive rock; he mainly played bass guitar – from the early 1990s he used a modified piccolo bass – but also various other instruments. In 2006 Orszaczky was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit by the Hungarian government. Also that year Orszaczky was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and died on 3 February 2008, aged 59.
Paul Atherstone Grabowsky, born 27 September 1958, is an Australian pianist and composer, founder of the Australian Art Orchestra.
Phillip Maurice Treloar is an Australian jazz drummer, percussionist and composer. In an extensive career devoted to creative pursuit Treloar has addressed himself to the problems of relationship found at the intersection of notated music-composition and improvisation. In 1987 Treloar coined the term, Collective Autonomy, to signify his endeavor in this field of work. Fundamental in this has been composition- and performance-development projects, with these at times involving electronic media. Collaborations have, and continue to be, crucial.
Eugene Ball is an Australian jazz trumpeter. He won the Best Australian Jazz Composition Award for "Fool Poet's Portion" at the Australian Jazz Bell Awards in 2008.
John Rae is a jazz drummer, composer, and band leader.
Thomas Vincent is an Australian jazz pianist, composer, arranger and band leader.
Peter John O'Mara is an Australian-born jazz guitarist, composer, arranger, teacher and author. He has been based in Germany since late 1981.
Richard Anthony Nunns was a Māori traditional instrumentalist of Pākehā heritage. He was particularly known for playing taonga pūoro and his collaboration with fellow Māori instrumentalist Hirini Melbourne. After Melbourne's death, he was regarded as the world's foremost authority on Māori instruments.
Matt McMahon is an Australian jazz pianist and composer. Winning the 'Wangaratta National Jazz Piano Award' in 1999, and the 'Freedman Jazz Fellowship' in 2005 established his place in Australian jazz. In 2010 his trio supported the Wayne Shorter Quartet at Sydney Opera House. Additionally he has played or recorded with many known jazz artists including Wynton Marsalis, Dale Barlow, Veronica Swift, Robert Hurst, Aaron Goldberg, Greg Osby, Phil Slater, Joseph Tawadros, Katie Noonan, Bobby Previte, Vince Jones, Dave Panichi and Steve Hunter. He has also performed with artists from a range of generic areas including Gurrumul, Sharon Shannon, Mary Coughlan, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Daorum, Elysian Fields, Jackie Orszaczky, Tina Harrod.
Ken Stubbs is an English jazz musician, alto saxophonist and composer.
Stephen John Magnusson is an Australian guitarist. He is known for his work as an improviser and has worked with the Australian Art Orchestra, and Elixir and Katie Noonan, Charlie Haden, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ricki Lee Jones, Sinéad O'Connor, John Cale, Gurrumul Yunupingu, Paul Grabowsky, Vince Jones, Christine Sullivan, Megan Washington, Paul Kelly, Mike Nock, Barney McAll, Enrico Rava and Arthur Blythe among others.
The Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) is one of Australia's leading contemporary ensembles. Founded by pianist Paul Grabowsky in 1994, it has been led by composer/trumpeter/sound artist Peter Knight since 2013 and led by pianist/composer/producer Aaron Choulai since 2023. The Orchestra explores relationships between musical disciplines and cultures, imagining new musical concepts that reference how 21st century Australia responds to its cultural and musical history.
The Aints is a band name used by Ed Kuepper during his prolific early 1990s period. The group's name relates to Kuepper's first recording group, The Saints, and its initial incarnation concentrated on material from the mid-to-late 1970s. The group then took on a life of its own and produced loud, feedback-drenched recordings of new Kuepper originals. In 2017, Kuepper convened a new iteration, this time adding an exclamation mark to record and tour material he had written between the years 1969-1978, much of which had been in the setlist of the original Saints but which had, with few exceptions, not been recorded or released.