In a captivating performance for the Perth International Jazz Festival, the trio performed serious music with a playful spirit.

“We’re going to play a couple of pieces from a series I’ve written called ‘Flickers’. In terms of meaning… There isn’t much meaning behind them.” Andrea Keller said this with a smile, sitting at a baby grand piano in a defunct cinema. To her right, Sam Anning, left arm around his double bass, seemed caught off-guard by her admission, and let out a short laugh. Next to Sam, Julien Wilson smiled, adjusting the mouthpiece on his tenor saxophone. Keller also calibrated: “I was thinking about ‘flickers’ of memory; they just appear for a moment, and then… they’re gone.”

Keller, Anning, and Wilson performed at Liberty Theatre on the morning of 5 November 2022. Their performance was part of the Perth International Jazz Festival and took place under the banner of Keller’s Transients project. Transients is a series of trio collaborations inspired by the musical philosophy of Allan Browne, a magnificent Australian jazz drummer and a beloved mentor to each member of the present trio. Anning has said Browne taught him that “music is far too important to be taken seriously”. The set at Liberty Theatre was a joyful demonstration of that principle, and of the vitality of the ephemeral present, in which Browne strived to live.

It began with Keller’s “Yo-Yo”. A flurry of free playing, which set sound ricocheting off the hard walls of the capacious venue, coalesced into something reflective but resolute. Here, and during much of the set, the refined harmony and absence of drums evoked chamber music — “serious” art. But the performance was spontaneous and uninhibited; the musicians playing in more ways than one. Anning and Keller, in particular, visibly and audibly delighted in each other’s invention as they interwove spontaneous sonic threads that tugged mischievously at the unmarked pulse of the music.

Wilson was unfazed by the fluctuation, alternately floating freely above it and dancing deftly amongst it. His control of timbre and dynamics was striking. Sometimes his notes were like embers glinting in a smoky haze of breath. Then, suddenly, the embers would flare, with a force that seemed to light up the old picture hall. Even when the flame burned brightly, some smoke was always present. But Wilson can vary the quantity and quality at will, from the almost-transparent wisps created by a slight growl to the dark plumes generated by dissonant multiphonics.

The set moved from “Yo-Yo” to the aforementioned “Flicker #2” and “Flicker #5” (the latter contained a particularly evocative set of changes). These pieces were followed by Wilson’s “LDT”, a wistful ballad with a strong turnaround, in which the saxophonist coloured his dense phrases with a bebop hue. Anning’s “Quake” resisted obvious musical metaphor, though a melody repeating over a rising bass figure suggested ground shifting underfoot.

The highlight of the performance was “Carefree Daze”, which Keller said she had written earlier this year as a hopeful (albeit unlikely) projection of the future. The means of projection included an Afro-Brazilian groove and a sprightly figured bass line. Keller’s solo was wonderful; flowing, lyrical gestures interrupted by breathtakingly agile flights into the upper register.

But even more memorable was Anning’s solo, which began with a rapid journey to the top of the fingerboard that seemed to genuinely take him by surprise. He immediately retraced it with a quizzical look on his face, as if searching for something that he sensed had almost been illuminated. As the solo continued, the area of the search expanded. Anning gave commentary on its progress, answering his probing bass phrases with grunts of affirmation or, notably in the case of a blues lick he deemed incongruous, disapproval.

It’s thrilling to witness someone searching like that: gamely, playfully, and openly. Whether they’re guided by a flicker of memory or a shaky projection of the future, the meaning is in the way they search. That’s what stays with you, when the light is gone.