The Brad Dutz Quartet first performed at a New Music Festival at the REDCAT in 2005. The original impetus was to form an acoustic, jazz-tinged chamber ensemble capable of producing a wide range of textures and colours. Given the unusual combination of instruments within the ensemble, there are very few chord changes and a greater reliance on vamps, tonal centres and ostinatos. The resulting scales provide interesting frameworks for improvisation, creating compositions that have much in common with 20th-century classical chamber music and harmolodics, a method of improvisational composition commonly associated with the music of Ornette Coleman.
Oboe and cello are rarely associated with jazz, a musical form that allows relatively more freedom than is usually found within classical forms. Consequently, no other group sounds quite like the Brad Dutz Quartet, which over four albums has created a body of music that is challenging, at times difficult, but always fun. Peripheral Hearing is no exception, a richly rewarding album of 21st-century music.