Foundation
Program

Exposed from the earliest age to the sounds of Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington by a jazz loving father, turning to jazz was a natural progression for Greg. In 1992 he took up a Bachelor of Music majoring in Jazz Piano at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music, feeling for the first time that he had found his true musical path. He graduated with distinction in 1995, together with a first place finish in that year’s Sydney Youth in Jazz competition.

The formation of the ‘Coffin Bros’ with saxophonist brother Sean in the early 1990’s was Greg’s first public exposure as a composer and arranger and established him as a serious young jazz pianist. With its skill and maturity, the band’s high energy music has impressed audiences and critics from the outset. 13 years later the brothers are still wowing audiences in Sydney’s premier jazz venues, with Simon Barker on drums and Brett Hirst on bass. Greg’s creative focus was shifted to the sophisticated sounds of The Java Quartet in 1996. The release of their first album “Glow” received national and international acclaim, prompting a European tour and an invitation to perform at the prestigious Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1997, alongside such jazz greats as Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. The band has since released 3 more albums, “Passages”(1998), “Dark Garden”, (accompanied by a national tour in 2001), and “Deep Blue Sea” in 2005. Greg’s album credits also include recordings with renowned trumpeter Simon Sweeney’s Sextet, “Emerald City Blues” (2002), singer/trumpeter Neilsen Gough’s Quartet (2002), and vocalist/composer/arranger Scott Walker’s soon to be released album on the ABC label, “My Kind of Lonely”.

Although jazz and vocal accompaniment has been his focus in recent years, Greg’s strength as a musician lies with his versatility. He played keyboards and provided background vocals in popular 90’s covers band “The Firm”, pop band “Swoop” and the well known funk band “Professor Groove and the Booty Affair”, with national tours for the latter two in 1998 and 1999. 2002 saw Greg playing the Fender Rhodes with bassist Steve Hunter’s “9 Lives”, while more recently, Greg played both in Sydney and interstate to critical acclaim in drummer John Pochee’s highly regarded “Space Cadets”. As proof of his formidable adaptability as a musician, Greg turned his talents to cabaret in 2003, performing in Canberra’s National Press Club as solo accompanist for Natalie Gamsu - two time winner of New York City’s MAC Award for Excellence in Cabaret Performance. In 2004 he also turned his hand to Musical Theatre as pianist/musical director for the musical “Footloose“.

With a reputation as one of Sydney’s foremost jazz pianists, Greg is in regular demand for concerts and gigs at many of Australia’s leading jazz clubs, bars, restaurants and festivals. He was the resident pianist at Sydney’s Four Season’s Hotel, before taking up a residency in Japan in 2004. Has since moved back to Australia where he teaches and performs on a regular basis.

Dr Alistair Noble began his life in music as a pianist, studying with Isobel Grigor, Alan Jenkins, and Larry Sitsky. A subsequent interest in the work of Winifred Burston (a remarkable Australian pianist who had studied with Busoni in Berlin) led to a Masters Degree in musicology, based upon extensive archival research. Alongside this historical research, Alistair found that music analysis is a way to bring together many of his diverse interests in composition, performance, and critique of music. A PhD in this field, completed at the Australian National University, presented groundbreaking work on the music of American composer Morton Feldman.

Alistair taught in the School of Music at the Australian National University for some years, in musicology, music theory, analysis, composition, and chamber music. He served as Head of Theory and Convenor of Graduate Studies. As an award-winning PhD supervisor, he has enjoyed working with many graduate-level researchers in a wide range of music-related areas and also in cognate fields such as film studies. He has been a guest-lecturer in many places, including the University of the Philippines, the Colloquium of the Paul Sacher Foundation, UNSW, and National Taiwan University. While at ANU, Alistair served for three years as  Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences. 

In 2013, Alistair published his updated Feldman research as Composing Ambiguity: the early music of Morton Feldman (Ashgate), which has been acclaimed internationally as a fundamentally important publication in this field.  

During 2014, Alistair was an invited Visiting Associate Professor in the College of Music at the National Taiwan Normal University, teaching orchestration, composition, and graduate seminars in the analysis of pop music and the sociology of music. While in Taiwan, he had the opportunity to accompany colleagues on fieldwork trips to several remote indigenous villages during major festivals, in addition to experiencing first-hand a wide range of musical performances, including Beijing-style operas, Taiwanese Nanguan, and the interesting local noise/sound-art scenes (about which Alistair has since published articles). 

In December 2015, he lectured on post-tonal music at the first Melbourne Music Analysis Summer School, held at Medley Hall, University of Melbourne. Recent compositions include the Glasteppich series (three pieces for piano, flute, and string orchestra) premiered by Arcko Symphonic with Michael Kieran Harvey and Kim Tan in December 2014, and Hauteurs/Temps (2015) for viola and percussion, to be premiered by Phoebe Green and Leah Scholes in 2016.