INSPIRE: From jazz to rock, funk, reggae & soul, Albany music genius David Rastrick has band for all occasions

Albany’s David Rastrick has two great passions in his life — his music and the environment. He has a band for every day of the week and his commitment to bettering the planet has seen him join anti-mining protests and campaigns to save forests. Sometimes the two combine, for he once spent two nights up a tree, with his trumpet. The trumpet is his first and enduring love but he’s also an all-round multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger with a massive range of styles which encompass everything from jazz to reggae via rock, pop, blues, swing and funk. It all started when he was a child messing around at home with the family piano and feeling that early connection between happiness and music. At primary school there was the option to play an instrument — either the flute, trumpet or euphonium — and he picked the latter, but was told it was too big for him. Luckily, as it turned out, a trumpet was thrust into his eager hands and he has not looked back since. Dragging a euphonium up a tree would have proved tricky. At high school he took up guitar because it was way cooler than the trumpet and more in tune with the music he was listening to at that time. But when he got to university he got into jazz and that is probably where his heart really belongs now. His most recent major project was to take several Australian rock classics, for example Never Tear Us Apart by INXS, and give them a jazz arrangement. It all came together on It’s Jazz, Mate! which he performs with Jazztrix, while his next live performance is on Saturday at Wilson’s, as simply David Rastrick. After that he heads to Walpole on August 15 with EXP, which performs the blues-rock of bands like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. So, with membership of seven bands and counting, doesn’t he ever get confused with the constant shifting of genres? “I love having a diversity of musical projects because it keeps it interesting for me and my audience,” he said. “But I am always happy to play the music people want to listen to. “It took me a while to get my head and my heart around jazz and I really love world music, but I’m aware that it’s not always about what I like. “For example, there’s a great swing dancing scene in Denmark so I play there with Jazztrix. “There’s not as much jazz in Albany so I’m probably pretty integral to the scene here, but there’s a lot of rock and classical and a real mix of musicians in the community.” Rastrick’s musical influences are wide. Asked to pick a favourite for a range of genres he mixes Bob Marley and Dizzy Gillespie with Hendrix and, Sly and the Family Stone. That wide range clearly helps with his other work for as well as playing, he’s involved part-time with the WA Academy of Performing Arts and with South Regional TAFE where he’s teaching on the college’s jam sessions, helping potential musicians learn to play in bands. Meanwhile, he’s still working to save the planet as a key member of the Albany Community Environment Centre which advocates around topics like plastic-free July and other, as he calls it, “nitty gritty stuff”. Although there are still protests to attend, his efforts there are less likely to add to his five arrests and he’s able to spend time finishing his doctorate, an intercultural collaboration to bring jazz to the traditional music of Oceania. He’s so busy he’s not really been able to think clearly about where his future lies. “I hope I’ll be able to turn to that once I’ve finished studying,” Rastrick said. In the meantime, he wants to continue improving the bands he’s in and blowing his own trumpet, in the nicest possible way.