CANBERRA guitarist and composer Alex Stuart returns from Paris to his beloved home town this Monday to launch his musically complex new album, “Place to Be,” but not without a little help from his colleagues and mentors.

The Alex Stuart quintet is made up of Stuart himself with guitar and compositions, Julien Wilson on sax, Miroslav Bukovsky on trumpet,  Jonathan Zwartz on bass and Tim Firth on drums.

Praised in the national press as “one of the best jazz albums of the year – 5 stars,” the album is described by its composer as an “ode to cultural openness.’ Stuart says he finds inspiration in many places, including “the jazz tradition, contemporary jazz, African and South American grooves, rock and post-rock, Indian and Balkan music, Australia, life in Paris’s 19th arrondissement, the sea and surfing and much more.”

After graduating from the ANU School of Music in 2005, he moved to France, immersing himself in Paris’s rich jazz scene.

A period in the group ‘Abakuya’, led by Cameroonian Francois Essindi, provided an opportunity to explore West African music, while a 2009 residency in India with sarod guru Anindya Banerjee familiarised him with the melodies and complex rhythms of the Hindustani classical tradition.

“Place to Be” was launched in May this year at Paris’s Sunset Jazz Club and has so far received an enthusiastic critical response. It follows his previous album, “Around” which won the 2011 Révelation prize at France’s largest jazz festival, Jazz à Juan. In Australia he was nominated for the Freedman Jazz Fellowship in 2013,

Stuart says Canberra was the key to the development of his musical career. “My teachers in the Jazz Department of the ANU School of Music, such as Mike Price and Miroslav Bukovsky, were particularly important, but I was also greatly encouraged along the way by people such as Chris Deacon at Art Sound FM, where I often played live with my mates as a teenager.” His praises also extend to artsACT, a grant whom which allowed him to release his first album, “Waves”, in 2005.

The Street Theatre concert is part of a national tour that includes Melbourne’s Bennett’s Lane, Sydney’s Venue 505, Wollongong’s Conservatorium of Music, Zephyrs Jazz at Four Winds Windsong Pavilion near Bermagui, and MONA in Hobart.

Alex Stuart Quintet, at Street TWO, The Street Theatre, 7.30pm, Monday 27 October 27, bookings to 6247 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au