Wilbur Whitta - Wildfire

From award-winning pianist and composer Wilbur Whitta comes a musical call to action on climate change. Whitta has gathered together three of Australia’s most exciting improvisers – Tom Avgenicos on trumpet, Jack Stoneham on alto sax and drummer Alex Inman-Hislop – to form the band Wildfire, playing music that draws on environmental negligence in Australia and around the globe. The band navigates Whitta’s music with a fierce intensity, presenting a unique distortion of the boundaries between the written and improvised.

Originally from Canberra, Wilbur Whitta has performed extensively around Australia, the UK, Europe and Japan. He has appeared as a member of legendary Australian jazz outfit Ten Part Invention and has performed alongside acclaimed international artists Kit Downes and Will Vinson. He was selected as a finalist in the 2021 National Jazz Awards, and in 2019, while living in London, won the Dankworth Jazz Composition Award. With musical influences spanning from contemporary pianists Craig Taborn, Aaron Parks and Kit Downes through to classical composers Sofia Gubaidulina, Béla Bartók and Olivier Messiaen, his is a unique and distinctive compositional voice.