Gian Slater’s Glimmer, set for release in January next year, is the vocalist’s ninth studio album. Raw and self-reflective, each of its songs reveals snippets of her intrinsic and extrinsic worlds – courage, stubbornness, shifting relationships with friends, growing older, technology.

A preview of the album – with the Melbourne-based musician on grand piano – formed the opening set of the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival, hosted in the Annandale Creative Arts Centre, a volunteer-run, community-focused venue with a proud tradition of Thursday Night Jazz.

Gian Slater. Photo © Shane Rozario

Slater delivered each of the tracks delicately, her voice clear, pure and sweet. Her vocal improvisation skipped so easily over complex scales, sometimes deliciously at odds with the chords of the piano.

Whirlpool, her final song built a darker harmonic platform that gave the work a bit of a bite and richer dynamic variation, was a standout of the bunch.

Following intermission was the premiere of Tapestries, a new work by Slater, inspired by the textiles that adorned her late grandmother’s wall. Not aiming to write a track directly about her grandmother (an artistically paralysing prospect, perhaps), Slater kept finding pockets of her within the...