Provenance is the new album from two legends of Australian music – a survey of intimate ballads that showcases the superlative craftsmanship of platinum-selling legendary singer Vince Jones and multi-ARIA-winning pianist Paul Grabowsky.
The title refers to the returning-to-roots that this album represents. Vince and Paul first worked together in the 1980s, when Grabowsky was music director to Jones; Provenance marks a renewed collaboration between the pair after several decades apart. But the word also describes the music which the duo chose to record: ballads that showcase the essential elements of their craft, elements that have been the foundations of their astonishing careers, pared down to the intimate combination of piano and voice (and occasionally piano and flumpet – a hybrid of trumpet and flugelhorn).
Provenance is “a collection of timeless songs with beautiful melodies”, as Vince puts it. The album begins with ‘Rainbow Cake’, composed by the pair in the 1980s. ‘Oh My Love’, written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, takes on touching poignancy in this new rendition; and from there the album presents classic songs from a variety of genres as well as a number of Vince’s own compositions.
Vince Jones needs no introduction to any music-lover. Renowned for the beauty of his voice and the eloquence of his trumpet playing, he is a genre-defying artist who has played thousands of gigs around the globe, recorded dozens of best-selling albums – and has never been afraid to comment on the world in which we live from an unashamedly idealistic perspective.
Paul Grabowsky has won an ARIA Award every decade for the past forty years (including in 2014, for Best Jazz Album). As well as being a pianist of the utmost sensitivity, he has been a director of some of Australia's most prominent arts festivals, the composer of nearly 30 feature film scores and several works of music theatre, the founder and leader for 19 years of the Australian Art Orchestra, and an executive at the ABC; he is currently at Monash University, where he heads up the Academy of Performing Arts.