Dave Goodman

May brought with it the opportunity to once again ask the eternal question: "where does the apostrophe go?" Ella and I had a nice time celebrating a happy day for Ella's mummy, and I celebrating a happy day for my own mother, so I like to use the plural possessive to celebrate mothers everywhere in wishing them a happy Mothers' Day. I hope you and all the mums around you had a nice day too.


What's the latest?


New Track: Maitreya - Dave Goodman Solo
I have released a new track called Maitreya, which is for sale exclusively from my website. Maitreya is a piece I wrote to perform at a Sydney Drummers Initiative drum clinic I did some years back (although it had a different title at that time), and I've also performed it at a handful of other clinics and events since. It features the great Matt McMahon playing a Moog solo. Matt is incredible on this one in that, after he got a feel for what the piece was all about, I captured this solo in what was, effectively, the first take.

Maitreya is the first in a series of pieces that I'm composing for performance and recording with my computer under the guise of Dave Goodman Solo, or simply just Dave Goodman. My previously released track Entelechies is also a part of this series - composed later, but recorded earlier. This series is made up of stuff that I perhaps wouldn't play in my quartet, and that I don't place any artistic filters or limits on: total freedom of individual self-expression. The pieces are also typically for performance in drum clinics. When I wrote Maitreya, I had just finished writing my doctoral thesis and I was still under the spell of Tony Williams. There's a track called 'Eris' from his 1979 album The Joy of Flying on which he played in duet with Jan Hammer, and so this is my little homage to Tony & Jan. Get Maitreya here.
 
Trioflight wins the 2015 Cranbrook Recording Studio Competition
One trio I really enjoy playing in is Trioflight with pianist Nick Southcott and bassist Max Alduca. It is a collaborative trio and each of us contributes our own music to be played. We enjoyed playing alongside a collective of poets and other musical artists for new, regular event New Sounds New Words in Glebe in May.

Trioflight was announced as the winner of the 2015 Cranbrook Recording Studio Competition this month. We'll be taking advantage of nine days of recording time at the Cranbrook studio, mixing and mastering at Studios 301, and the printing of 400 CDs with artwork designed by the Cranbrook School Marketing and Communications Department. We'll also be presenting a masterclass for Cranbrook School music students, and launching the album at a Cranbrook event later in the year. I'll let you know about that closer to the date.
 Will Harpur (pictured, left), one of my current students, opened the DRUMscene Live Australian Tour 2015 in Sydney with an open drum solo. He was followed by some of the biggest drumming names in the world today: Jojo Mayer, Todd Sucherman, Jason Heerah and Dom Famularo. Will won Australia's Best Junior Drummer at The Ultimate Drummers' Weekend in Melbourne in 2013, and I recently interviewed him about his drumming in the lead up to the event. Here's what he had to say along with some commentary from Dom Famularo, and DRUMscene managing director and founder Frank Corniola. I also feel privileged and honoured beyond words that Frank included my name amongst a list of many of my peers, mentors and heroes as being one of Australia's "brilliant and unique drummers" who has "contributed in their own way to the development of Australian drumming, our sound and our identity".  This appears in the magazine's current 20th anniversary edition in which Frank also recalls a great many interesting anecdotes about his unique experiences over the past 20 years of running the magazine. Find your copy at the DRUMscene website.