Guitarists Tommy Emmanuel and Martin Taylor’s album The Colonel & The Governor has been nominated for a an Australian Recording Industry Association award but lost out in the pre-announced ARIA category winners list to Canberra vocal ensemble The Idea Of North for their album Smile in the best jazz album category. Other nominees were: Andrea Keller’s Family Portraits, Jonathan Zwartz's The Remembering & Forgetting of the Air, and Renee Geyer’s Swing.

The Colonel & The Governor features the lovely "exile reverie" ballad ‘Heat Wave’; ‘Jersey Bounce’ a tune that could easily sit within a Woody Allen films; and ‘Bernie’s Tune’ (made famous by Gerry Mulligan in the 1950s) where the pair clearly let loose from the start with get-stuck-in laughs and a dash of gypsy jazz.

Other tunes are ‘A Smooth One’; ‘True’; ‘One Day’; George Shearing’s ‘Lullaby of Birdland’ complete with a double staircase scale-melting introduction as the guitarists ascend and descend to meet on the shared landing of the melody; ‘The Nearness of You’; ‘Down at Cocomos’, a favourite of Taylor’s with the lilting Caribbean melody a live mainstay for the leading UK jazz guitarist in recent years; ‘The Fair Haired Child’; ‘Secret Love’, a solo for Emmanuel; ‘Wonderful Baby’; and Billy Taylor’s ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free’. Taylor and Emmanuel toured extensively earlier in the year and have known and played together since the 1990s. More on the awards: http://www.ariaawards.com.au
Tommy Emmanuel (above left) and Martin Taylor