reviews.
★★★★.5
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Mosaic is a ten-piece ensemble inspired by the late John Pochée’s great band Ten Part Invention (formed in 1986 but still in existence, performing occasionally). The advent of Mosaic, a strong band full of expressive musicians, is a significant event in Australian jazz. Its members met over several years as students in jazz studies at the Sydney Conservatorium: Braden Clarke & Sarah Morrison (trumpet & flugelhorn); Chiara Minotto, Lachie Eggert, Leo Marland & Aidan Wong (saxophones, clarinet, flute); Lee Orszaczky (trombone & bass trombone), Ravi Trachtenberg-Ray (piano), James Watt (upright and electric basses), Matt Simmonds (drums). Mosaic is dedicated to original music, specifically written by band members under 25; it amply celebrates the swing-feel, while otherwise utilising a variety of innovative time-feels; its writers take full advantage of the instrumental colours afforded by ten musicians, many of them doublers; and it shows a keen awareness of the avant-garde. I predict a very strong future for Mosaic. It has completely transcended the “student band” ethos, and sounds like a mature, fully professional jazz orchestra.
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— Eric Myers, Published in the Weekend Australian, January 2025
★★★★.5
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Mosaic is a 10-piece Sydney big band that displays harmony and unison, whilst creating the energy and focus of a quartet. Where We Are Now is their debut release. They are all still on campus, crafting the future of jazz. Compositions come from the musicians, or from invited young composers.
Even the artwork is by a young artist, Lee Francis-Evatt.
Starting with beguiling gentleness, Ambient Sound Suite asserts itself with some strident trumpet from Branden Clarke and tenor sax from Aidan Wong.
Listen for Chiara Minotto’s baritone sax and Matt Simmonds’ drums.
Sarah Purdon composed Showers in May, a melodious track that conceals superb edgy playing from trombonist Lee Orszaczky, and Chiara Minotto. Come Rain or Shine brings mellowed tones from songstress Leah Berry.
Chicken Burger/ Not Enough Blues displays swing [rhythm] amidst well-crafted piano.
Don’t miss The Bard or 600 Omens, or the others.
Recorded in 2MBS Founders Studio by emergent audio engineer, Rose Mackenzie-Peterson, for 2MBS Jazz Artist in Residence.
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— Keith Pettigrew, Published in Fine Music Sydney, November 2024.
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Rinse and Repeat is a joy to listen to. This second album from Mosaic showcases the strong musical voices and open hearts of a group of exceptionally talented young musicians. From the first notes, the listener is drawn into a world of beauty, groove, synergy, lyricism, emotion, imagination, and nuance. The compositions and arrangements are expertly crafted, imaginative, and always in service of musical expression. Sophistication permeates every level of the writing: fluid transitions between time signatures and feels, textures that strike a perfect balance between composition and improvisation, and arrangements that feel both logical and surprising.
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Memorable melodies abound; the harmonic palette is rich and expressive. Every solo achieves a compelling balance of imagination, structure, storytelling, and the interplay between the familiar and the unexpected. The soloists navigate the music’s ebb and flow with grace and assurance. The blend between the horns is sensational -- resplendent with personality, cohesion, and character.
The album’s lyricism and emotional depth stand out, complemented by several irresistibly funky tracks that conjure sunlit days, radiating joy and warmth.
Throughout the album, Mosaic exemplifies the finest qualities of improvised group music, sounding like a close-knit group of friends fully at ease with one another and their art form. It is rare to hear such humanity and personal storytelling expressed so vividly by a group of young musicians.
The superb use of a ten-piece ensemble both honours and extends the vision of the late John Pochée OAM, who founded Ten Part Invention as a forum for Australian composers and improvisers.
Mosaic continues this legacy in their own voice—marked by imagination, skill, and brilliance.
Here, composition and improvisation exist in perfect balance, working together to generate music of striking beauty and meaning. Rinse and Repeat is a generous and heartening recording that has left me feeling cleansed, refreshed and uplifted. Listen and Repeat!
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— Sandy Evans OAM, liner notes of Rinse and Repeat. May 2026
★★★.5
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Following in the giant footsteps of Ten Part Invention comes Mosaic, a new Sydney band with the same 10-piece instrumentation, and with the same shared emphases on improvisation and original compositions (from both inside and outside the band). Formed at the Sydney Conservatorium by trombonist Lee Orszaczky and saxophonist Chiara Minotto, the band bristles with talent and ideas on this, its debut album.
It begins almost shyly, with saxophonist Lachie Eggert’s gospel-tinged The Ambient Sound Suite, which could almost be an outtake from Carla Bley’s fabulous Dinner Music set from 1977. Sarah Purdon’s Showers in May offers a more expansive canvas, with interesting cross currents in the arrangement, before Orszaczky smears his massive trombone sound across it all, after which come delightfully contrasting forays from Minotto’s flute and James Watt’s bass.
The total package manages to be to seem simultaneously autumnal and bustling, as if programmatically depicting people trying to escape those showers..
Sustaining the meteorological bent is Minotto’s pretty Come Rain or Shine, with lyrics and vocal by Leah Berry, about a relationship break-up that was apparently for the best, with apposite solos from trumpeter Braden Clarke and Eggert on tenor. More intriguing is The Princesses Picnic by guest saxophonist Gabriella Hill, with its initially ghostly interaction between her tenor, Ravi Trachtenberg-Ray’s piano and Matt Simmonds’ drums, before the whole band rears up behind Hills’ now-storming tenor, which then beckons a short feature from Simmonds.
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Orszaczky’s The Bard is a soul-jazz stomp, the groove decorated with silvery lines from firstly Trachtenberg-Ray and then the soprano of Leo Marland. Another guest composer, Thnvir Gill, is responsible for the more turbulent – portentous, even! – 600 Omens, which boasts some dramatic ensemble work and again has vague echoes of Bley.
The medley of Eggert’s swinging Chicken Burger and Minotto’s Not Enough Blues pulls the band close to some of the pieces that Bob Bertles wrote for Ten Part Invention: the arrangements sizzling and Aidan Wong delivering one of the album’s most compelling solos on tenor.
They end on a more elegiac note with Wong’s Alone, on which he again shows himself to be a notably visceral improviser, and the piece, itself is gorgeous in the way it mutates, with trumpeter Sarah Morison exploring the implications of the fairground-like ¾ section at the end.
Pieces like this point the way forward for the band: casting its compositional net as wide as possible, and meanwhile letting the ensemble’s character emerge not just via the pieces, but via each member becoming ever more distinctive in terms of sound and ideas.
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— John Shand, Published on Writing in the Dark, November 2024.