Ultra-eclectic Joe Chindamo is becoming well-known outside his home country of Australia, but his MusicFest Vancouver appearance will be his first in Canada.

Jazz pianist Joe Chindamo has been kicking keyboard ass in his native Australia since the early ’90s, and now he’s starting to make an equally big impression in North America. But it will be his first north-of-the-border visit when he plays here at MusicFest Vancouver. He features in a duo next Sunday (August 8) at the Cellar with his regular guitarist, Doug de Vries, and both will play a concert date the night before at the Norman Rothstein Theatre with bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Craig Scott, both Vancouver stalwarts.

“I’ve never been to Canada,” Chindamo says, reached by phone at his Melbourne home. “And that seems wrong, since so many of my favourite musicians come from there: Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, and Joni Mitchell, to name a few.”

His eclecticism isn’t just a matter of home-listening taste. The 49-year-old improviser has performed on a number of movie soundtracks, toured widely with fusion giant Billy Cobham, and played with orchestras and opera stars; he recently recorded an as-yet-unreleased album of Giacomo Puccini arias. His latest CD, Another Place Some Other Time, revisits music associated with films by the Coen brothers.

“There’s even some bluegrass on that record,” the pianist says. “My approach is to take old tunes and treat them like they are fresh off the press. And I also do that with songs by Burt Bacharach, Paul Simon, Dolly Parton, or whomever.”

That cheekiness, as he puts it, extends to playing with his heroes, as he did in 1993, when late bass great Ray Brown, best known as Peterson’s long-time sideman, joined him on the recently rereleased CD The First Take.

“I loved playing with him,” he explains, “but I spent a lot of time working on my arrangements, and that may have peeved Ray, because he just wanted to play some bluesy tunes. Also, I think Oscar left an elastic band on his players, so he could pull them back into his way of doing things. But I wasn’t there to—how do you say star-fuck politely? But Ray Brown or no Ray Brown, I wanted to make the best record possible.”

Chindamo (pronounced kin-DAH-mo), who sometimes doubles on accordion, thinks much of this moxie comes from his transplanted Italian parents.

“Like most immigrants, they just didn’t tolerate any form of laziness,” he says. “There was no jazz in my upbringing”¦but stylistically, I just can’t stop being Italian. I think that comes out in my love of melody. The musicians I like have an edgy sound, but also an incredible, mellifluous beauty.”