JAVA QUARTET

BAND MEMBERS

DR. MICHAEL GALEAZZI

PHD [MUSIC PERFORMANCE] MONASH UNIVERSITY - BASS AND BANDLEADER 

ARIA award winning and APRA nominated artist/composer, producer, label owner and session bassist (electric bass guitar and acoustic upright bass), Michael has decades of national and international touring experience. From original projects such as The Java Quartet and Karma County to providing bass for artists such as indigenous legend Jimmy Little and international festival chanteuse Camille O'Sullivan, Michael remains a part of the contemporary music industry as an artist, musician, arts worker, educator and researcher.

GREG COFFIN

BMUS [JAZZ] SYD. CON - PIANO

Well-known in Sydney as one of 'the' piano player to watch, he joined the Java Quartet with Mike Quigley in 1995. With 8th grade classical piano [AMEB] under his belt even before he hit the jazz scene, Greg brings a wealth of musicality with him every time he sits at the piano. Whether it be solo at Sydney's leading hotels, as a sideman for some of Sydney's best players, such as Paul McNamara, Craig Scott and Steve Hunter, or fronting his own ensembles, Greg always astonishes both player and audience with the potency of his vision.

MIKE QUIGLEY

MMUS - [MUSIC PERFORMANCE] DRUMS

After studying jazz at Sydney’s Conservatorium Of Music, Mike Quigley co-founded the Contemporary Music Studies (CMS) school in Sydney’s northern suburbs, where he directed student ensembles from 1994 to 2003. During this time Mike performed and recorded with various jazz and indie rock projects before joining metal band Tourettes in 2000. With Tourettes Mike recorded 3 albums and toured Australia, Canada, California and Europe. Tourettes disbanded in 2008, and in 2010 Mike founded an experimental post-rock/choral project named Palaces, releasing a self-titled CD in 2014. In 2018 Mike joined Japanese doom metal vocalist Yukito Okazaki in Enough to Escape, touring Australia and Japan in 2019. Mike earned a Graduate Diploma from the Australian Institute of Music (AIM) in 2019 where he focused on sample-based composition, and completed his Masters at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts (AMPA) in 2021 in the field of jazz performance.

MATHEW OTTIGNON

[BMUS HON] - SAX

Matthew Ottignon is a gun sax player/multi-instrumentalist with indisputable musical genes originally from Auckland, New Zealand, and now based in Sydney, Australia. With an enviably busy diary including a mix of performance, composition and education, Matthew is one of Australia’s hardest working musicians. He creates sounds that spring from everywhere he’s been and everything he’s seen... music that’s undoubtedly earning him a place among the key constituents of the contemporary scene.

With a keen ear and an expansive range of musical experiences, Matthew’s original compositions for his own band, Mister Ott, comprise an amalgamation of melodies from many lands, in particular Ethiopian music, aligned with the free-form improvisation and syncopation for which African-pedigreed jazz is renowned. Mister Ott has three releases, the most recent being ‘In The Flow’ 2021.