‘There’s [MISTER] MICHAEL McQUAID!’

Yes, that’s what I once whisper-yelled to my siblings during a concert, as recorded in my vignette. Too many thrills were happening for the first time last year: stepping on Iowan soil, greeting the Mississippi River, hearing live Bixian hot jazz, and meeting the very virtuoso—Mr. Michael McQuaid, specialist of the hot-jazziest reeds.

Among my dearly considered yet unofficial “teachers,” whom I met in Davenport is the Australian gentleman, Mr. Michael McQuaid, a current resident of London. For many of the readers residing in the U.S., supposing that you’ve attended previous Bix festivals in IA, you might recall the rare, special occasion of him sitting in with the Graystone Monarchs, a Jean Goldkette/McKinney-styled big band—or as of 2024, with the Jazz-O-Maniacs, the Celebration Belle riverboat combo, and The New Wonders, a NYC septet. Or in the past ten years, you might’ve spotted Mr. McQuaid occasionally up in Chicago with the Cellar Boys during one of his vacations in America. If you’re unaware of his mellifluous reed-playing, it’s an urgent sine qua non to hear the “first-class jazz improviser,” as proclaimed (and still echoed) by Mr. Steinman of Jazz Lives. Mr. McQuaid remains a well-established jazz musician throughout the UK, touring frequently across Europe, participating in bands like The Vitality Five, the Forest Hill Owls, and his very own Michael McQuaid Saxophone Quartet, as well as being a committee member of the annual Mike Durham’s International Classic Jazz Party, held in Whitley Bay, UK. But before he settled in London, the McQuaidian chronicle began in Australia:

Born in 1981, Mr. Michael McQuaid grew up in Canberra, the capital of Australia. At around age ten or eleven, when his sisters began their instrument lessons, he didn’t want to miss out, and thus began his early musical education on clarinet. However, Mr. McQuaid found his classical music lessons rather uninteresting then. It was not until age thirteen when his love for jazz was discovered. Yet, his passion for 1920s-30s styles instantly surpassed opposing jazz subgenres, as Mr. McQuaid remembered, “My clarinet teacher taught me basic improvising in a range of jazz styles, but I quickly picked 1920s and 30s styles as my favorite. The first recording he played for me, which hit me like a ton of bricks, was ‘Royal Garden Blues,’ by the Dutch Swing College Band—it was a 1960s recording, but in an older style.”

Soon, the young reedman found Canberra’s relatively small boundary beneficial as it offered an opportune balance of supply and demand for jazz musicians. At age fifteen, as Mr. McQuaid became interested in early styles of jazz, he joined a professional band of older adults, taking the place of a clarinetist who had left.

When inquired about his first influential musician of the early 1900s, Mr. McQuaid explained, “I have too many favorites to mention! But when I first got into jazz as a teenager, I knew I liked jazz that had clarinets and banjos in it, because that’s what my clarinet teacher had played for me. So, I looked in jazz history books at the library and found out that that meant 1920s jazz. After that, I pretty soon got a CD called ‘Clarinet Marmalade,’ which was a compilation of 25 of the greatest jazz clarinetists ever, so that introduced me to many of the musicians who are still favorites, like Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo, Omer Simeon, and all the others.”

At the time of the “Eureka moment” of jazz in his early teens, Mr. McQuaid also picked up saxophone, eventually mastering both the alto and C-melody, along with bass and tenor. Furthermore, many might not be aware of his additional ability to play trumpet/cornet. Regarding his former education in Canberra before professionally performing on brass, Mr. McQuaid recalled, “Around that time [of picking up saxophone], I was trying to write arrangements, and, of course, if you’re trying to write, you need to understand how the instrument works. My sister had a trumpet, so I kind of messed around with hers. I borrowed a cornet from school, and I didn’t really have lessons on those. Same with piano—I had piano lessons when I was quite small, but I didn’t really do much. I was trying to work out how songs were structured harmonically. So that’s when I was using those not to perform on, but just to fill in gaps in my knowledge.”

In the early 2000s, then in his early twenties, Mr. McQuaid moved from Canberra to bustling Melbourne. There he joined musicians of similar age and performed on both reeds and trumpet, participating as bandleader in the famous Wangaratta Festival Of Jazz. In 2004, Mr. McQuaid formed The Red Hot Rhythmakers, a big band that featured 20s-30s jazz. The Rhythmakers toured Europe in the summer of 2008, and performed around Australia’s finest events such as Melbourne’s Swing Festival, Noosa Jazz Festival, Victorian Jazz Club, and Melbourne International Jazz Festival with swing dance troupes like “Echoes of Harlem” (now known as “The Rhythm Revelers”) that highlighted thrilling acts such as the “One Man Dance,” paradoxically a six-man feat.

Were you a full-time musician then?

“No, so, by that stage, I was teaching English at a high school, which I did for years in Australia until I moved to London. I was playing a lot, but that was mostly kind of trying to fitas much music as I could around my actual job. So, I was busy all the time, and I look back and I’m not sure how I fit everything in!” said Mr. McQuaid.

Conversely, the transitioning stage was complete with legendary accomplishments—one being the brief U.S.-Australian collaboration of the Hot Jazz Alliance in 2011. Most thankfully, during its short-lived years, the band recorded a 2014 album in Canberra, wittily entitled, “The Hot Jazz Alliance – Bandstand Diplomacy,” with Mr. Andy Schumm on cornet/piano; Mr. Josh Duffee on percussions; Mr. Michael McQuaid and Mr. Jason Downes on reeds; Mr. John Scurry on guitar/banjo; and Mr. Leigh Barker on double bass/sousaphone. Within the following year of 2015, the virtuosi launched a worldwide tour, embarking on July seventh from Boisdale Music in Belgravia, London, touring throughout the UK, arriving in the States, gigging in NYC, bringing back the music of Chauncey Morehouse in Chambersburg, jamming in Chicago, performing on local Quad Cities’ TV for the WQPT PBS broadcast, and concluding with the Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival in Davenport.

The Hot Jazz Alliance was quite eminent in its heydays, but coordinating musicians from two different continents proved to be much complicated, as Mr. McQuaid recollected in response to its bygone existence, “I wish we were [still around] . . . That band is tricky to combine because everybody has a busy schedule. Since COVID, it’s a bit more expensive to travel, and for a band including Australians, it’s tough to get people to be able to afford such a long flight, but we did enjoy playing together and maybe one day in the future—certainly, we’d all like to.”

In 2017, Mr. McQuaid’s ultimate relocation occurred, leaving Australia for London. Afterwards, he joined great jazz bands and performed alongside local maestri like Mr. Nicholas Ball, the late Mr. Keith Nichols, Mr. Enrico Tomasso, Mr. Martin Wheatley, Mr. David Horniblow, Mr. Spats Langham, Mr. Alex Mendham, etc., though that’s not all! His appearances continue to be widespread, frequently touring across Europe and at special occasions, visiting the States, as mentioned by Mr. McQuaid, “I get to visit the U.S. sometimes and see my friends there and hear them, sit in with bands there if I can. Getting back to Australia has been a bit tougher because it’s so far, and I’d wish I could get there more often because there are great bands there too—as well as my family!”

Regarding your uniquely clear timbre on alto saxophone and C-melody style, howdid you develop that? Is it the reeditself?

“So, my approach on the alto and C-melody is kind of really inspired by a few different players . . . like Frank Trumbauer, Loren McMurray, Bobby Davis, Benny Carter, or Johnny Hodges. Alto sax is a really tough instrument to play in an older style or style inspired by all the musicians that way. Without getting too specific, I think the instruments and the mouthpieces that a lot of alto sax players use these days give a different sound. If you want something that matches the older music, which is a little warmer perhaps, but not as projecting, you have to choose different equipment and learn to make a different sound—and you have to want to make that sound, but a lot of people don’t want that sound. So, I think the answers is that I sound that way because no one else wants to!” observed Mr. McQuaid.

Speaking of the McQuaidian style in playing, he’s additionally a talented composer, and a couple of his original songs can be heard in his 2017 album called “Diaspora,” with the first composition being its eponym. The other is called, “Black Spur,” which captures the scenery of Australia’s daunting wilderness of trees towering along twisting and turning roads, as there lies the Black Spur Drive in Victoria.

What inspired you tocompose?

“It’s a natural development of this music because anyone who gets into 1920s music will see that a lot of the compositions were by the people in the band. And if they can do that and express their own ideas—then we should too. Like we’ve talked about, I’m not about recreating the past. I’m about doing something inspired by that. So, I’ve got some ideas, and I’ve got to write a tune. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy, and it doesn’t mean that they’re always good—but it’s fun to try, and when it works, it gives you a different kind of excitement,” explained Mr. McQuaid.

Regarding the mutual philosophy that music should be accompanied with another interest and pastime, he remarked, “As a musician you’ve got to have some other things that you’re into because music can too easily become your whole world. I think that’s good and also bad. For instance, the danger in that is all your work feels like a social occasion, and then you don’t do anything else. That can make you a bit one dimensional, boring, or feel stale, so it’s important for musicians to do other things. One of things I’m really into from when I was an English teacher is live theater. There’s so much on in terms of plays, theaters in London. I get to go out and do something. Also reading and all that sort of thing too. . . I also like watching lots of TV and film, and art galleries, museums, coffee and food, travel, and walking.”

What are your other favorite genres ofmusic?

“I like lots of types of music, including most types of classical (especially baroque), Biguine music from Martinique, Cuban styles, and pretty much anything that’s done well,” Mr. McQuaid listed.

Commonly understood among fans, musicians, and authors in the world of vintage jazz, there’s been a revolving notion tinged with uncertainty: “Will the music die out. . . ?” or slightly gloomily, “When will it die out?” to affirmatively concluded pessimism, “Yup, it’s gonna die out.” Subsequently, Mr. McQuaid shared a bit of his philosophy on those views: “When I started playing this sort of jazz, I didn’t know that it was mostly going to be older people than me. My teacher played for me and I thought, ‘Wow this is amazing! I love this sound!’ I didn’t care who was playing it or listening to it—I just wanted to play that music, and be around that music, and learn about it and everything.

“Ever since then everyone’s been saying, ‘Ooh, it’s dying out! There’s all these old people, you know. How can we get young people interested?’ And now, I’m one the kind of middle-aged, and people are still saying the same thing. It hasn’t died out yet. I don’t think it’s going to.”

All in all, Mr. McQuaid is a great musician, transcriber, composer, and arranger, but therewithal a benevolent historian, willing to share music to people of any age. When mentioning about his “Overthinking Old Jazz” video series on YouTube and asking whether he educates music to youth, I learned about his commitment to teach anybody interested, though not presently as a main vocation:

“I really like that approach of trying to help other people. I was given a lot of strong mentorships [from Mr. Paul Furniss and late musicians like Mr. Ade Monsbourgh, Mr. Tom Baker, and Mr. Graeme Bell] when I was growing up and getting into the music. And so, I always see it as it’s just natural to try and pass that on to whoever I can, whether they are young or not. If someone’s interested, we should share what we know. The key term is we should avoid “gatekeeping” of jazz. There’s a really strong danger of that—not just in jazz but in all sorts of things. People who know things want to keep it to themselves. I don’t understand that; I’d really much prefer to share what I learned because then other people can build on that and do better later,” reflected Mr. McQuaid.

What are the most rewarding and challenging aspects of being a trad jazzmusician?

“I get to play the music that I love the most. I love all sorts of music, really, but in terms of my own career and playing, I’ve chosen to go really deep into one series of styles—slightly different within the 20s and 30s. It’s wonderful to be able to constantly be making new discoveries on how that music works, learning new tunes, and geeking out. There’s so much depth and detail, and it’s never boring to me. It’s always a privilege to play this music, and I like how there’s a strong framework with freedom to express yourself within that. It’s both precise, but also free and loose.

“And I’d say one of the challenges is playing music that’s old but trying to make it new. I’m really into all this old music, and I know a lot about history, but I don’t feel like what we’re doing is historical. And that’s both a challenge and excitement when it works. . . We got this strong foundation of everything that’s gone before. But we’re trying to kind of pay tribute to that, but also do our own thing and be our own selves,” stated Mr. McQuaid.

It is certainly evident that the fine virtuoso has accomplished his goal, including his fellow bandmembers of The Vitality Five Jazz Band, stationed in London. Their website currently states, “100% PEP guaranteed,” which is 1000% accurate, as it’ll make any listener dance.

Moreover, if you happen to travel to the UK or its vicinities somewhere in the future timeline of life, he can be heard gigging with The Vitality Five, the Forest Hill Owls, and his Michael McQuaid Saxophone Quartet. Whether you’re at this November’s Whitley Bay jazz party or attending one of those future gigs in Europe, I can assure that you’ll certainly spot the prestigious reedman, hear his mesmerizing playing, and exclaim a salutation (hopefully internally, thus sans disturbing fellow attendees): “THERE’S MISTER McQUAID!”