SIMA Jazz:Now – SUMMIT

SIMA invites you to celebrate community and the 2025 Jazz:NOW program in their final event of the series – SUMMIT – a mini festival presented at Flight Path Theatre in Marrickville featuring three distinct improvising ensembles Clocks and Clouds, Showa 44 and Hinano Fujisaki’s Home Is.

Clocks and Clouds are a unique ensemble based in Wollongong comprising core players and composers Kraig Grady and Terumi Narushima. Each of them individual paragons of microtonal music practices, their totally acoustic performances feature specially retuned vibraphone and pump organ, or Mesotonal (‘between tones’) Marimba and thundering bass Meru Bars which engage with the acoustics of a space to create unique resonances and pulses. Between them, their work has been presented at festivals and galleries around the world, and they have accrued a devoted following among the new music cognoscenti.

Showa 44 are one of Australia’s most highly regarded improvising groups of the last 30 years. Featuring guitarist Carl Dewhurst and drummer Simon Barker – both of them renowned as two of the countries most distinctive voices - the band utilise tuned metallic resonances, rhythmic densities and spontaneous invention to manifest compelling and evocative soundscapes. Having developed a profound and arcane improvisatory dialogue over their many years of collaboration, the music heaves and bends into unknown spaces, often being propelled forward by virtuosic bursts of percussion, torrents of harmony and sheer ecstatic energy to reach cathartic climax. This is a band that has shaped the Australian improvising language.

Home Is is the project of saxophonist and composer Hinano Fujisaki, an artist who has quickly been making herself known as one of Sydney’s pre-eminent new creative voices. Home Is spans genres and influences - with nods to Japanese folk songs, Hermeto Pascoal and Miles Davis – while maintaining a simple sincerity, allowing the heart of the music to pour forth. The ensemble evokes images and memories with folkloric melodies emerging from delicate textural sound worlds grounded by Fujisaki’s rich, warm tenor sound. Their eponymous debut EP is a lyrical offering of gratitude - to friendship, to music and to community; and as such a perfect way to conclude the 2025 Jazz:NOW series.

 Says Artistic Director Novak Manojlovic: “SUMMIT is a celebration - it is a celebration of music as a hearth for community; a space whereby people can gather and be in communion with themselves, their contemporaries and the history of their practice. In this landscape where culture is being levelled by a thrust towards heartless efficiency, music and community proffer meaning and sanctuary like they never have before. So join us in celebrating what we have created together; this music, this community, this ecosystem from which we draw so much strength and hope.”