Marc Osborne

Soft West is a newly formed jazz quintet based in Perth, Western Australia. We first came together in 2016 to explore and develop each others original music. After a few months of rehearsal and recording we submitted an audio application to the Bucharest International Jazz Competition. The BIJC is organised through jmEvents and is one of the biggest jazz competitions in the world. Although we had only been working together for a short period of time we wanted to see if our material stood up on the international stage. On February 28th we were informed that we had been accepted into the semi-final round. The semi finals involve bands from 20 countries around the world playing across eight days from May 13th and we are the only representatives from Australia. This is a great achievement for a young band and a huge opportunity to promote and present Western Australian music to an international audience through a reputable organisation. Whilst the ultimate success of winning first prize at the competition would be amazing, simply attending for the semi-finals will give the band invaluable experience for our collective artistic and professional development as well as laying the foundation for future touring and performance opportunities through jmEvents. Put simply, we really want to go!!

Your contributions will be used to offset our travel and accomodation costs for participating in the competition. The funds that we receive through this campaign will be combined with a grant from the Department of Culture and the Arts to pay for:

Airfares - $7250 (5 tickets @ $1450)

Travel Insurance - $120

Accomodation - $1270 ($141.11 a night for five people)

Our main challenge for this project was putting together a successful application and we have achieved that. Now our main obstacle is financial. Whilst this is an amazing opportunity we're eager to pursue, getting five musicians to Romania is expensive. We're hoping to combine DCA funding with your contributions to help overcome this obstacle.