What makes a Milton Man Gogh?
With the bands upcoming show at Doo-Bop approaching, Milton Man Gogh goes under the Doo-Bop Spotlight.
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How did you guys meet?
Andrew Saragossi: We’re all graduates of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, although we went through at slightly different times. Ben and Zac formed a close bond at university out of their eclectic shared taste in music. They still play together in many other projects, including the Valtozash Jazz Metal Big Band and the Yitzhak Yedid Trio, among others. I (Andrew), however, was only really introduced to the guys because of our involvement in the Stairwell Project Music in Hospitals Program, run by Peter Breen at Jugglers Art Space. We all love the initiative and we’ve seen how much it’s benefited patients, staff and family members. Anyway, Ben asked us if we’d like to play some of his original music at a QPAC Green Jam gig in late 2016, and voilà, Milton Man Gogh was born.
Doo-Bop is part of your CD launch tour. How has the tour been received so far?
So far, so good! We actually released and launched the album late last year at JMI Live to a really appreciative and engaged audience. We even had Bryant Alexander of 4ZZZ perform a set of magic in the set-break! With such a great reaction both at home and abroad via a few great reviews, we decided to take the album on the road this year. We played the first of our dates at Black Bear Lodge in the Valley last week to a packed house, and we’re eager to show Nimbin, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Nambour and of course Doo-Bop what we’ve got!
What does Milton Man Gogh stress to impress?
As you may have noticed, we love puns! The album title, whilst comical, I think describes a common state of being, especially in the world of music, but not exclusively. In a world of Facebook, Youtube and memes, people tend to stress more about how they appear to other people, and less about self-reflection and personal development. As a band, we try to buck this trend. We play music we love, regardless of what others think, and we try and put as much of ourselves into our performances and compositions as we can. All we want is to be authentic versions of ourselves, and to encourage and empower others to do the same. We stress to impress positive and genuine music into the world. Heavy…
You’ve said that your core influences from each of the band members are jazz, prog, contemporary classical and metal. How would you describe the end result? And do you have your own exclusive genre?
We don’t like to think too hard about what genre or classifications our music falls under. We certainly bring some eclectic influences to the table, but we feel that this isn’t an uncommon thing, especially in the jazz tradition. There are a ton of jazz musicians all over the world embracing elements of metal, prog-rock, contemporary classical and electronica into their art. Some great examples would be Tigran Hamasyan, Jim Black, Mark Guiliana, Donny McCaslin, The Bad Plus, Steve Lehmann and Niels Klein. Heck, even Miles Davis embraced hip-hop at the end of his career. What was that album called again?… 😉
What are your goals for the next 5 years?
In the short term, we’re hard at work on a new release for later this year! (We can’t talk too much about that.) We’ve also been looking into artistic residencies, both in Australia and overseas. We want to continue to develop our local support and fan base, and slowly build upon that to create both interstate and ultimately international touring opportunities.
Have you played individually at Doo-Bop before? And are you looking forward to the gig?
We have all played at Doo-Bop before in different groups. I (Andrew) played with Sydney saxophonist Michael Griffin’s Thelonious Monk Octet, whilst Ben played with Dave Kemp’s group and Zac with David Bentley. Whist this will be the first headline show for Milton Man Gogh at Doo-Bop, we actually all rocked up to a jam there late last year, and played a bunch of our songs to a somewhat confused but also enthusiastic audience! In all seriousness, we’re absolutely thrilled to be performing our music at what has quickly become one of the preeminent jazz venues in this country, and we’re excited to give the punters a different taste to what they might normally expect from a jazz club.
