CROSSING THE OCEAN: CARL ORR TAKES THE PLUNGE
BY BEN NICHOLLS
FRIDAY 30 OCTOBER 2026
Carl Orr carries his achievements lightly. He has toured with Sting and with jazz fusion legend Billy Cobham, had his own 300-show residency at Ronnie Scott’s in London, and worked with seven former bandmates of Miles Davis. After almost thirty years in London, Carl and his wife Jane have recently returned to Adelaide where Carl spent his teenage years. You might not suspect all this if you had just bumped into him on the street, but you would have noted his affable and down-to-earth character. In this, he seems to reflect the best parts of life back in Adelaide. “I think the overall strength of Australia is that people are fundamentally good-natured,” he tells me.
Carl has also experienced the challenges that come with life in Australia, especially as a boy moving to Adelaide with his parents and brother from Newcastle upon Tyne in 1973. “I couldn’t open my mouth without somebody imitating the way that I talk, or saying things like ‘Oh, duh, Carl!’ Just really unkind.” His dad had visited Australia twice as a member of the British Merchant Navy during his national service. “He thought it would be a good place to bring up the family,” Carl recalls, “and he was particularly taken with Adelaide and so we moved here when I was twelve.”
There were silver linings though. The family lived in a “better house, in a nicer area, compared to Newcastle,” and Carl soon found a place at the brand-new Para Hills High School with “the most amazing music teachers, the first one was Eric Bryce.” I can see Carl’s respect for “Mr. Bryce” straight away, and the memory of an early mentor, someone Carl says embodied “intuitive intelligence.”
The teachers at Para Hills supported his passion for music and helped him develop his talent for guitar. One of his first encounters with Eric Bryce’s teaching style included a demonstration with musical examples from Beethoven, Dave Brubeck and Cat Stevens. This openness changed Carl’s life in a few ways. He remembers walking into Umbrella Records on the corner of Frome and Rundle Street with lots of curiosity but “no money to buy anything.”
While browsing at Umbrella, he happened to pick up an album by John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. “There were photos of musicians of the band on the back,” he recalls, “and when I looked at the photo of the drummer Billy Cobham I thought, yeah, he looks like a nice guy, I’d like to play in his band and be his friend.” This dream Carl had as a fifteen-year-old boy in Adelaide came true fifteen years later.
First, he had to get out of Adelaide. “Like most people, I only have a limited number of talents,” Carl says, “but taking the plunge and taking a risk is one of my talents, and it’s been immensely rewarding.” He initially moved to Sydney and then to Boston for a few years studying at Berklee College of Music during the 1980s.
It was a difficult transition for Carl but a new commitment to practicing Nichiren Buddhism helped him through. After Berklee, he returned to Sydney and the gigs started coming in. “It was a different world then,” he says, “you could actually play three, four gigs a week in Sydney and kind of make a living from that, although you had to do other things.” He was playing with Jackie Orszaczky, “the nearest thing to Miles Davis in Australia” because “if you played with him, it was like instant respect and credibility.” It was this credibility that eventually meant he was tapped to play with Billy Cobham’s band for an Australian tour in 1989 and again in 1995.
Later that year, Carl, Jane and their four-month-old daughter moved to London. He had a feeling that “if we can get ourselves to Europe to live, I’m sure I can get into his band.” He set himself a challenge, he would “ring Billy Cobham once every two months until he either invited me into the band or told me to leave him alone.” Six phone calls later, Carl received a fax saying, “I’ve got a tour of Switzerland and Austria in October ’96. I’d like you to do it.” Carl toured with Cobham’s band for the next fifteen years.
I wanted to know if these big moves had inspired “Crossing the Ocean,” one of the tracks on Carl’s latest album Live in London (recorded at the 606 Club in Chelsea right before he and Jane returned to Australia). He told me the track is meant to be more metaphorical. It is about knowing yourself and saying, “I'm going to do this and just take the plunge.”
Interview with Carl Orr at 5MBS Studios, Thursday 13 August at 9.30am (ACST).