Auckland Band Invited to Major International Music Festival
Auckland jazz ensemble the Neil Hannan Band has been invited to perform at the SXSW Music (Sou By SouWest) Festival in
Austin Texas in March 2004.
The festival, which last year attracted 1000 bands attracts considerable numbers of people associated with the music
industry worldwide has been going for eighteen years. It is a showcase of hundreds of musical acts from around the globe
over five nights on fifty stages in downtown Austin.
Hannan says the invitation has come about because the organisers are looking for authentic roots music as opposed to the
over processed music now generally available.
The festival was originally designed so that industry professionals could hear unsigned bands with a view to offering
recording contracts, but it's now moved on and invites largely signed bands.
"It's very pleasing to be invited to perform at such an event. It's reinforced what we have been trying to achieve with
the band and that our original music is being appreciated.
"It's somewhere in the area of jazz-orientated rhythmic roots if we were to give it a genre," says Hannan.
The four piece band was formed to play original instrumental music written by bassist Hannan, pianist Stephen Small and
other New Zealand writers.
"The strength of this band is that we play what is good to us. We experiment and have ensured that we are free of
constraints placed on us by commercial necessities. The irony is that by playing what we want to play we have been
recognised internationally."