Biography
An Australian pianist, composer, arranger, and producer working in jazz, Barney McAll sustains careers on both Pacific coasts. His recorded output as leader began with the 1995 debut Exit and now exceeds a dozen albums, while sideman appearances surpass one hundred and film scores number more than twenty. Stylistically his keyboard work moves across bop, modal, fusion, and post-bop. The 2005 release Mother of Dreams and Secrets received international recognition. Sideman engagements have included Gary Bartz, Dewey Redman, and Billy Harper. He acted as music director for Sia in 2011 and 2012. After seventeen years in New York City he returned to Australia and issued the ARIA award-winning Mooroolbark in 2015. Zephyrix, recorded with the Monash Art Ensemble, followed in 2017. Under the alias TQX, also known as TourniquetX, he released Global Intimacy in 2018, drawing on Black Mirror and additional influences. Precious Energy appeared in 2022, presenting an expansive fusion of spiritual jazz, soul, and jazz-funk.
Barnaby McAll entered the world in 1966 just outside Melbourne. His upbringing occurred in a household filled with music and visitors; parents frequently hosted gatherings attended by jazz enthusiasts Lenny Barnard, the noted Australian drummer and brother of trumpeter Bob Barnard, and Barnard’s wife Jane, who supplied recordings of Bessie Smith and Clarence “Pinetop” Smith then uncommon in Australia. Piano-accompanied singalongs of standards occurred regularly, with McAll’s brother John studying piano and sister Pip training as a vocalist. These sessions left a lasting impression, prompting McAll to absorb piano playing almost unconsciously. His first paid engagement took place at a Melbourne restaurant possessing an upright piano, where he performed freely and received thirty dollars plus a meal. That experience proved decisive, and he soon joined a quintet whose piano was amplified, revealing to him the added force of microphones.
At this stage McAll absorbed the work of Mike Nock, Keith Jarrett, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Monty Alexander, along with the keyboard styles of James Booker, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles, plus the sonic approaches of the Necks and Brian Eno. At eighteen he hitchhiked to Sydney for a concert by Egberto Gismonti and Nana Vasconcelos, an event he later described as transformative and credited with reshaping his musical identity, after which he pursued original composition reflecting that encounter.
Between 1985 and 1989 he earned a bachelor’s degree at the Victorian College of the Arts, where Nock served as one instructor. In 1992 an Australian Arts Council grant enabled private study in New York City with Jim Beard, Barry Harris, Walter Bishop, Jr., Larry Goldings, Mulgrew Miller, Joey Calderazzo, and Dave Kikoski. Returning via Cuba, he studied with Chucho Valdés and Ramon Valle. In 1993 he received an APRA award for Best Jazz Composition for “Hindered on His Way to Heaven,” written with trumpeter Vince Jones, then an employer.
Exit, his first leader recording for Jazzhead, was made in three cities across two continents with nineteen musicians; McAll composed or co-composed nine of the twelve tracks, supported by Lloyd Swanton, Philip Rex, Dale Barlow, David Rex, Russell Smith, James Greening, Scott Tinkler, Allan Browne, Vincent Herring, and Jimmy Cobb. The album earned an ARIA nomination for Best Jazz Album.
Subsequently McAll moved to New York and continued recording and touring with Jones. His second album, Widening Circles, featured Billy Harper, Herring, Ben Street, Jeff Ballard, and Ben Monder yet remained unreleased until 2012. He performed frequently as a sideman, led a trio, and joined Groove Collective in 1999, appearing on that year’s Declassified.
Release the Day followed in 2000, again with an all-star cast including Peter Apfelbaum, Gary Bartz, Jay Rodriguez, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen, and Joey Baron. Additional years brought further work with Groove Collective, Bartz, Herring, Greta Gertler, and others. In 2002 McAll toured with Dewey Redman’s quartet alongside John Menegon and Matt Wilson. In 2004 he contributed to DJ Jazzy Jeff’s In the House and to Fred Wesley & the JB’s Wuda Cuda Shuda.
Mother of Dreams and Secrets, issued globally in 2005, involved three ensembles: a Cuban percussion group at Egrem Studios, an Australian electro-acoustic ensemble with dual bassists, and a New York lineup including Eddie Bobe, Liberty Ellman, Rosenwinkel, Harper, Rodriguez, Jonathan Maron, and Roseman. Later that year he issued the collaborative Vivid with Badal Roy and Rufus Cappadocia.
Subsequent activity encompassed continued work with Groove Collective, Gertler, and Tom Browne. In 2007 McAll received the Australia Council Fellowship. Kaleidoscopic, a 2009 collective date with Julien Wilson, Stephen Magnusson, Mark Helias, and Jim Black, appeared on Jazzhead; he also played on Sa-Ra’s Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love and self-released Flashbacks on Extracelestial Arts, recorded in Brooklyn with Pedrito Martinez, Drew Gress, Matt Pavolka, George Schuller, and Obed Calvaire.
In 2011 McAll became music director for Sia, a post held slightly more than a year. He also issued Blueprint and Cowry Shells, collections of previously unreleased New York compositions, and accompanied Andy Bey on Companions of the Lost Ark.
Widening Circles received its long-delayed release in 2012 to widespread acclaim. That year Graft appeared, featuring Dan Weiss, Gian Slater, Sia, and the sixteen-voice Invenio choir, juxtaposing choral purity against morphing textures of improvisation and notation while exploring technology’s impact on interaction; the album earned Aria, AIR, and Bell nominations. Additional 2012 appearances occurred on Universal Thump’s debut and Bartz’s Coltrane Rules: Tao of a Music Warrior. Two solo sets, Solo Piano Live and Chucky, Vol. 1: Swirl Cauldron Swirl, followed in 2013 on Extracelestial Arts, the latter named for McAll’s homemade instrument incorporating kalimbas, glockenspiel, altered music boxes, AM radio, pick-ups, a wooden resonator, a mini mixer, and further elements.
After seventeen years in the United States, McAll returned to Australia in 2015 and celebrated with Mooroolbark on ABC Jazz, titled after the Wurundjeri name for his hometown; the album charted and won best jazz album honors from the Australian Independent Record Labels Association and The Age Music Victoria. He received the Peggy Glanville-Hicks composer residency in Sydney in 2016, and Mooroolbark later claimed Best Jazz Album and Best Song (“Nectar Spur”) at the Australian Jazz Bell Awards.
Hearing the Blood arrived in 2017, merging soul, choral, folk, and urban jazz elements; eight tracks were recorded at Sony Studios Australia with Jonathan Zwartz and Daniel Merriweather, while the instrumental portion of “Echoless Shore” was captured in Brooklyn and later augmented by Slater and the Invenio Singers in Australia. Baby Winter, an ambient collaboration with Genji Siraisi, also appeared. Sylent Running, a 2018 trio project with Slater and Chris Hale examining relationships of opposites, was recorded in New York with Ben Vanderwal, Dan West on laptop, toys, and electronics, and Nir Felder.
Zephyrix, commissioned two years earlier by the Monash Art Ensemble and directed by Paul Grabowski, fused the Greek god Zephyr with the phoenix, invoking five alchemical birds across separate tracks and was released through Extracelestial Arts.
That same year McAll launched the TQX project, inspired by Black Mirror, Her, and the spread of disinformation. Global Intimacy, issued in December, employed vocalists including Sia, Merriweather, and Slater to create a collage of avant-pop, future soul, spiritually oriented contemporary jazz, and theater and film music, marking a new creative phase. He continued the approach on 2019’s An Extra Celestial Christmas, a collection of spirituals, lounge pieces, folk songs, originals, and improvisations funded by the Australia Council.
Responding to the 2020 Australian bushfires, McAll released the single “Bleeding Trees” with a quintet and offered Lockdown Hardrive Pearl Dive, a set of archival material, to Patreon and Bandcamp subscribers. In 2021 he produced and played keyboards on Slater’s Grey Is Ground. Archival releases included Live Archival Recording by the Dewey Redman Quartet, documenting a 2002 Chicago concert with Wilson, Menegon, and Redman, issued with Lidija Redman’s approval, and the Billy Harper Quintet: Live in Brooklyn, captured during a 1992 Australian tour alongside Eddie Henderson, Clarence Seay, and Newman Taylor Baker.
Precious Energy appeared in March 2022, reflecting McAll’s post-return experiments with instrumentation, ensembles, classical groups, ambient textures, and retro exotica updated for the present. The album synthesized earlier stylistic threads into a celebratory blend of soul, jazz-funk, and pop, introduced on Bandcamp with the statement that the music served as a balm during 2020 and 2021. Featuring Hiatus Kaiyote, Bartz, Laneous, Belle Bangard, Jace XL, and Rita Satch, it paid tribute to Leon Thomas, Pharoah Sanders, Stevie Wonder, and John Coltrane and received favorable attention from Gilles Peterson, Rolling Stone, and additional outlets.
Barnaby McAll entered the world in 1966 just outside Melbourne. His upbringing occurred in a household filled with music and visitors; parents frequently hosted gatherings attended by jazz enthusiasts Lenny Barnard, the noted Australian drummer and brother of trumpeter Bob Barnard, and Barnard’s wife Jane, who supplied recordings of Bessie Smith and Clarence “Pinetop” Smith then uncommon in Australia. Piano-accompanied singalongs of standards occurred regularly, with McAll’s brother John studying piano and sister Pip training as a vocalist. These sessions left a lasting impression, prompting McAll to absorb piano playing almost unconsciously. His first paid engagement took place at a Melbourne restaurant possessing an upright piano, where he performed freely and received thirty dollars plus a meal. That experience proved decisive, and he soon joined a quintet whose piano was amplified, revealing to him the added force of microphones.
At this stage McAll absorbed the work of Mike Nock, Keith Jarrett, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Monty Alexander, along with the keyboard styles of James Booker, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles, plus the sonic approaches of the Necks and Brian Eno. At eighteen he hitchhiked to Sydney for a concert by Egberto Gismonti and Nana Vasconcelos, an event he later described as transformative and credited with reshaping his musical identity, after which he pursued original composition reflecting that encounter.
Between 1985 and 1989 he earned a bachelor’s degree at the Victorian College of the Arts, where Nock served as one instructor. In 1992 an Australian Arts Council grant enabled private study in New York City with Jim Beard, Barry Harris, Walter Bishop, Jr., Larry Goldings, Mulgrew Miller, Joey Calderazzo, and Dave Kikoski. Returning via Cuba, he studied with Chucho Valdés and Ramon Valle. In 1993 he received an APRA award for Best Jazz Composition for “Hindered on His Way to Heaven,” written with trumpeter Vince Jones, then an employer.
Exit, his first leader recording for Jazzhead, was made in three cities across two continents with nineteen musicians; McAll composed or co-composed nine of the twelve tracks, supported by Lloyd Swanton, Philip Rex, Dale Barlow, David Rex, Russell Smith, James Greening, Scott Tinkler, Allan Browne, Vincent Herring, and Jimmy Cobb. The album earned an ARIA nomination for Best Jazz Album.
Subsequently McAll moved to New York and continued recording and touring with Jones. His second album, Widening Circles, featured Billy Harper, Herring, Ben Street, Jeff Ballard, and Ben Monder yet remained unreleased until 2012. He performed frequently as a sideman, led a trio, and joined Groove Collective in 1999, appearing on that year’s Declassified.
Release the Day followed in 2000, again with an all-star cast including Peter Apfelbaum, Gary Bartz, Jay Rodriguez, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen, and Joey Baron. Additional years brought further work with Groove Collective, Bartz, Herring, Greta Gertler, and others. In 2002 McAll toured with Dewey Redman’s quartet alongside John Menegon and Matt Wilson. In 2004 he contributed to DJ Jazzy Jeff’s In the House and to Fred Wesley & the JB’s Wuda Cuda Shuda.
Mother of Dreams and Secrets, issued globally in 2005, involved three ensembles: a Cuban percussion group at Egrem Studios, an Australian electro-acoustic ensemble with dual bassists, and a New York lineup including Eddie Bobe, Liberty Ellman, Rosenwinkel, Harper, Rodriguez, Jonathan Maron, and Roseman. Later that year he issued the collaborative Vivid with Badal Roy and Rufus Cappadocia.
Subsequent activity encompassed continued work with Groove Collective, Gertler, and Tom Browne. In 2007 McAll received the Australia Council Fellowship. Kaleidoscopic, a 2009 collective date with Julien Wilson, Stephen Magnusson, Mark Helias, and Jim Black, appeared on Jazzhead; he also played on Sa-Ra’s Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love and self-released Flashbacks on Extracelestial Arts, recorded in Brooklyn with Pedrito Martinez, Drew Gress, Matt Pavolka, George Schuller, and Obed Calvaire.
In 2011 McAll became music director for Sia, a post held slightly more than a year. He also issued Blueprint and Cowry Shells, collections of previously unreleased New York compositions, and accompanied Andy Bey on Companions of the Lost Ark.
Widening Circles received its long-delayed release in 2012 to widespread acclaim. That year Graft appeared, featuring Dan Weiss, Gian Slater, Sia, and the sixteen-voice Invenio choir, juxtaposing choral purity against morphing textures of improvisation and notation while exploring technology’s impact on interaction; the album earned Aria, AIR, and Bell nominations. Additional 2012 appearances occurred on Universal Thump’s debut and Bartz’s Coltrane Rules: Tao of a Music Warrior. Two solo sets, Solo Piano Live and Chucky, Vol. 1: Swirl Cauldron Swirl, followed in 2013 on Extracelestial Arts, the latter named for McAll’s homemade instrument incorporating kalimbas, glockenspiel, altered music boxes, AM radio, pick-ups, a wooden resonator, a mini mixer, and further elements.
After seventeen years in the United States, McAll returned to Australia in 2015 and celebrated with Mooroolbark on ABC Jazz, titled after the Wurundjeri name for his hometown; the album charted and won best jazz album honors from the Australian Independent Record Labels Association and The Age Music Victoria. He received the Peggy Glanville-Hicks composer residency in Sydney in 2016, and Mooroolbark later claimed Best Jazz Album and Best Song (“Nectar Spur”) at the Australian Jazz Bell Awards.
Hearing the Blood arrived in 2017, merging soul, choral, folk, and urban jazz elements; eight tracks were recorded at Sony Studios Australia with Jonathan Zwartz and Daniel Merriweather, while the instrumental portion of “Echoless Shore” was captured in Brooklyn and later augmented by Slater and the Invenio Singers in Australia. Baby Winter, an ambient collaboration with Genji Siraisi, also appeared. Sylent Running, a 2018 trio project with Slater and Chris Hale examining relationships of opposites, was recorded in New York with Ben Vanderwal, Dan West on laptop, toys, and electronics, and Nir Felder.
Zephyrix, commissioned two years earlier by the Monash Art Ensemble and directed by Paul Grabowski, fused the Greek god Zephyr with the phoenix, invoking five alchemical birds across separate tracks and was released through Extracelestial Arts.
That same year McAll launched the TQX project, inspired by Black Mirror, Her, and the spread of disinformation. Global Intimacy, issued in December, employed vocalists including Sia, Merriweather, and Slater to create a collage of avant-pop, future soul, spiritually oriented contemporary jazz, and theater and film music, marking a new creative phase. He continued the approach on 2019’s An Extra Celestial Christmas, a collection of spirituals, lounge pieces, folk songs, originals, and improvisations funded by the Australia Council.
Responding to the 2020 Australian bushfires, McAll released the single “Bleeding Trees” with a quintet and offered Lockdown Hardrive Pearl Dive, a set of archival material, to Patreon and Bandcamp subscribers. In 2021 he produced and played keyboards on Slater’s Grey Is Ground. Archival releases included Live Archival Recording by the Dewey Redman Quartet, documenting a 2002 Chicago concert with Wilson, Menegon, and Redman, issued with Lidija Redman’s approval, and the Billy Harper Quintet: Live in Brooklyn, captured during a 1992 Australian tour alongside Eddie Henderson, Clarence Seay, and Newman Taylor Baker.
Precious Energy appeared in March 2022, reflecting McAll’s post-return experiments with instrumentation, ensembles, classical groups, ambient textures, and retro exotica updated for the present. The album synthesized earlier stylistic threads into a celebratory blend of soul, jazz-funk, and pop, introduced on Bandcamp with the statement that the music served as a balm during 2020 and 2021. Featuring Hiatus Kaiyote, Bartz, Laneous, Belle Bangard, Jace XL, and Rita Satch, it paid tribute to Leon Thomas, Pharoah Sanders, Stevie Wonder, and John Coltrane and received favorable attention from Gilles Peterson, Rolling Stone, and additional outlets.
Albums
Hearing the Blood
2018
Vivid
2018
Swirl Cauldron Swirl
2018
Graft
2018
Mooroolbark (Deluxe Edition)
2015
Trio This
2009
Baby Winter
2006
Singles
