The Andy Sugg Group is a Melbourne–based quartet that features Andy on tenor and soprano saxophones. It explores contemporary post-Trane improvisation in original compositions written for a small group setting.
While firmly grounded in its stylistic time and place, the Andy Sugg Group plays music that has left home. It’s music in the moment, played by highly articulate musicians with something to say both as soloists and as members of a collective. The Group’s music fuses an eclectic range of compositional influences, which include contemporary jazz, funk, R&B and avant-pop. It’s Andy’s “blowing band”; a vehicle for extended improvisation in the best tradition of contemporary jazz.
The Group’s current release, After Utopia, is a remaster of the Melbourne sessions which produced the 2004 album of the same name, and which features US saxophone legend David Liebman in his first ever recording with an Australian band over his forty-odd year association with this country. This remastered After Utopia includes previously unreleased material from the original sessions.
In 2020, Grand & Union was released, and features Brett Williams (piano/keys), Alex Claffy (bass) and Jonathan Barber (drums). Two previous albums, Tenorness and Wednesdays at M’s, feature Sean Wayland (piano/keys), Matt Clohesy (bass), Mark Whitfield Jnr and Nate Wood (drums). Earlier albums include, The Berlin Session, recorded in Germany in 2011 and exploring a more avant-garde setting—it features Kate Kelsey-Sugg (piano), Jan Leipnitz (drums) and Sean Pentland (bass)—and Brunswick Nights, recorded live in Melbourne (Australia).