Reviews for Midnight Rain
"Beautiful and sensitive music that is both elegant and deliberate with a gesture toward folk traditions. As with all good music, it brings a vivid sense of place through a contemplative point of view, evoking a gentle drive through a favourite landscape."
Jamieson Shaw
Senior Music Editor: The Get Down
Turning Studios, USA
"I love the lyrical quality of Steve's music. It's really stunningly beautiful music without being contrived or overly-constructed."
Andre de Quadros, Professor of Music and Chair, Department of Music Education, Boston University
"A couple of great albums have just come out recently. First up, I’m going to play you a track by Steve Crump from his album called “Midnight Rain”. This is an album produced by Heath Cullen and beautiful piano pieces by Steve Crump. We heard a track called “Broken Walls” - Steve Crump on piano and Slim Fitz on melodica, and the album produced by Heath Cullen up in Candelo, in southern NSW. Just a beautiful album.”
Neil Rogers, 3RRR, “The Australian Mood, 18th August 2016.
"Crump clearly possesses a richly accessible sense of melody and compositional craftsmanship. These tracks exemplify his ability to marry a productive tension between a liberal use of catchy melodies and a non-pretentious display of musical sophistication. Although instrumentals, these compositions are nevertheless song-like (in the best sense of the term)"
Sean Lowry, Def FX (Definition FX in Nth America) founding concept, principal writer, co-producer and performer in internationally successful seminal electro-rock band; currently convenor of Creative and Performing Arts, The University of Newcastle; and currently Founder and Executive Director, Project Anywhere (global peer reviewed exhibition model for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity)
Midnight Rain by Steve Crump (2016)
A Night Train Recording / Produced by Heath Cullen
"In Midnight Rain, his debut studio recording, pianist Steve Crump opens up his sketchbook to us. It’s no new sketchbook, just off the shelf; it’s one that Crump has travelled with for a long time, and kept close, before now deciding to reveal its pages.
Crump has been a good listener over the years. His work happily escapes categorization, yet (like many another student) he has familiarized himself with classical, traditional and popular forms – has assimilated the originals - before going on to improvise upon them.
I liked Midnight Rain most, however, in the places where Crump allows himself to wander furthest, to take chances – even to mix colours from several sections of his musical palette within the same song. “Marrkap” and “Castles In The Air”(Tracks 3 & 4) are standouts for me in this regard. By contrast, “You Said I Said” (Track 6) stays in more conventional pop territory and does not beckon me in quite the same way.
An exception to what I’ve been pointing to here is “If I Give My Heart To You?” (Track 12), a beautifully rendered modern hymn, a quiet gem in a very traditional setting. And in “River Boy Themes” (Track 14) Crump and Slim Fitz (melodica) jump right off the sketchbook page and find a completely new track to wander down together. An appropriate ending for this album, in a place where it hasn’t been before; leaving this listener with the thought that – the next time Crump opens his book to us – there might be sketches from some fresh trails that he has discovered on his own."
Voila!
"What lovely music Steve has created. It reminds me so much of “Piano Stories” by the award-laden British film/TV composer, Debbie Wiseman, who also composes on the piano before arrangements and orchestration. I love listening to Steve playing as there are some unexpected twists from minor to major, for instance at the end of “Everytime” (Track 5). Steve has attractive melodic and harmonic ideas and his pieces are well-structured and well-controlled. I love the sound of that piano!"
"In this CD you can hear how Steve introduces an organic approach to his phrasing, melodic development and their elaboration. He is developing a lyrical style that emanates from melody. Sometimes the relationship between the melody and harmony are independent, suggesting an approach to composition that is modally based."
Professor Richard Vella
Chair and Professor of Music
Newcastle Conservatorium, School of Creative Arts.
Reviews for Winter Night at Liffey
Reviews have started coming in with Heather Rose (Award winning author of The Museum of Modern Love etc) observing “What a poignant thing this is. Together, Bob and Steve have created a little bit of wonder. Enjoy!”. Raewyn Connell (Internationally acclaimed author of “Southern Theory”, busy sociologist, obscure poet and ever-hopeful feminist) sees the CD as “Music and poetry – a classic combination, put to new use evoking moments in an Australian life where complex emotions are linked to place, landscape, and mysteries of relationship. Steve Crump’s music works from, and beyond, Bob Brown’s reading of his own texts, creating subtly different pieces that will remain in memory.”
Winter Night At Liffey, a CD of four songs, featuring poetry read by Bob Brown over interpretative piano pieces by Steve Crump.
If you would like to purchase “Winter Night At Liffey” please visit the Bob Brown Foundation Online store: www.bobbrown.org.au/onlinestore $20 includes postage
CONSIDERING LIFE” EP 2022
John Lamp 94.7: The Pulse (Geelong) “Brave… wonderful… Inspired… a joy”.