Performance at Floriade Night Fest with Sophie Edwards. Image by Meg Houghton.
For many years now, if you wandered through the Peter Karmel Building at ANU on Thursday afternoons, you'd hear it before you saw it — swung eighths, walking bass lines, a room full of young women and gender-diverse musicians working through the changes together. This Thursday-afternoon program has recently been relaunched and renamed 'Progressive+ Groove', and the new name comes with a new mission: don't just play jazz, play everything.
Progressive+ Groove is one of the flagship ensembles at the ANU Community Music Centre (CMC), which offers a diverse range of music programs for all ages, interests, and levels of ability as the outreach arm of the ANU School of Music. Formerly known as Girls Jazz+, the group has spent years building a reputation as a safe, low-pressure space to learn jazz & improvisation through weekly rehearsals and performance opportunities.
The group's identity as a space for women and gender-diverse musicians remains front and centre, and the program's core structure including performance opportunities and weekly rehearsals hasn't changed. What has changed is the scope of what gets played: where Girls Jazz+ kept things squarely in swing and standards territory, Progressive+ Groove is opening the book up to funk, fusion, pop, rock, contemporary and beyond — a shift that reflects the evolution of the modern musician more broadly as well as what the players themselves have been asking for.
The rebrand lands at a good moment for the CMC, which has spent the past decade or so expanding its program slate, all under the banner of getting more Canberrans engaging with music, whatever the genre.
Applications for Progressive+ Groove opens each semester, though there is a standing invitation for the curious to drop by a rehearsal and see what the fuss — and the groove — is about.