Mike Nock
New Zealand-born pianist and composer Mike Nock is one of the acknowledged masters of jazz in our region, known equally for his improvising at the keyboard and for compositions that reach well beyond the jazz stage.
Mike Nock returned to Australia in 1985 after twenty-five years in the United States, where he had built an international reputation through touring and recording.
Although primarily known as a jazz composer, his music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, the New Zealand Piano Quartet and New Zealand String Quartet, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Synergy, Ensemble 24 and Melbourne Windpower, among many others. A substantial set of fully notated piano pieces is heard on In the Time of Sakura (MD 3314).
From 1996 to 2001 he was music director of Naxos Jazz, and in 1999 he received a two-year Australian Arts Council Fellowship. He was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in 2003 for services to jazz; in 1983 he hosted his own television series Nock on Jazz, and in 1993 he was the subject of a TVNZ documentary.
Artist's website: www.mikenock.com
Compositions by Mike Nock appear on
Uluru: New Solo Cello Works for David Pereira
Twelve new Australian solo cello works written for David Pereira, celebrating the handing back of Uluru to its traditional Indigenous owners. Responses range from didgeridoo-like sonorities in Hopkins to the modernism of Dean.
Mike Nock also appears on
Pratt's Alchemy
Percussion compositions by Daryl Pratt, one of Australia’s finest vibraphonists in classical and jazz settings, and a sought-after general percussionist.
Flying
AtmaSphere is a Sydney jazz band specialising in virtuosic performances of its own works. Some tracks carry a Zen calm; others offer sheer pleasure from more notes per second than seem possible. Guest spots by Don Burrows and Mike Nock heighten the pleasure.