Teacher and student will unite when The Conspiracy Trio take on the Brisbane Jazz Club in August.
The Conspiracy Trio are a jazz and blues group comprised of Dan Hirsch, Dave Spicer and Pete Walters — the later two taught Dan at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Dan, who plays the drums, formed the group when doing his honours thesis, morphing the student-teacher relationship into something more collaborative.
After he graduated last year, the trio decided to continue playing as a group. “We did a couple of gigs last year through The Con, and I wanted to keep playing since graduating,” Dan says. He explains that taking formalised lessons and turning it into a situation where they could play as a group was “something I'd wanted to do for a couple of years ... Part of the thesis was looking at that transfer of musical knowledge through listening and interactions with music, so this was a way to practice that. But it was also just a way of learning from these two really talented musicians.”
"In jazz music a lot of it is about who you play with. Basically you want to play with people better than you so they kick your arse and you step up at the gig... that sort of learning and development process."
When it came to formally naming the group, Dan was a bit cheeky. “It's just something we'd talk about in our lessons. Not lizard people style stuff, just funny little things that I would be fairly skeptical about and they would tell me all this weird stuff.
“It's a bit smart-arsey of me to call them that, 'cause I didn't tell them I was going to, I just called it that... I haven't told them yet. I'm assuming they know though ... but they haven't rung me or discussed it or anything like that, so I'm sure they'd find it quite amusing really.”
Dan enjoys playing with The Conspiracy Trio as he finds it's good to break away from the peers that he normally plays with. “For me, it was a way to play with people I hadn't played with before and try to change or alter – not in a bad way – the music that I was creating as well ... In jazz music a lot of it is about who you play with. Basically you want to play with people better than you so they kick your arse and you step up at the gig... that sort of learning and development process. For me being a younger musician, playing with these guys allowed my music to develop in a way it wouldn't have otherwise.”
For Dan, music is all about connecting with an audience and having a good time. “I was doing a gig at the [Brisbane] Jazz Club a few years ago, and an older gentlemen came up to our singer and he was very emotional, and he was just very thankful that we were playing this music because him and his wife used to listen to this music. So that's what I love about it so much.
“It's all about having a good time, on stage as a musician and also as the audience. They're not there necessarily to listen to music of a certain standard or quality, they're there to have a nice time and enjoy something or maybe get away from stuff, and that's really important... that moment was really good, we thought 'yes we've done our job, this guys got it’.”
The Conspiracy Trio play Brisbane Jazz Club Thursday August 28.
