Lights Out At Foundry616 (Naked City)
Image: diegoidarragamusic / Instagram
Lights Out At Foundry616 is the latest edition (June 23, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – exclusive to City Hub.
Look around the world today and you will soon discover that many of the great cosmopolitan cities have one thing in common. It might not rate as highly as a grand opera house or an art gallery full of million-dollar riches, but it’s still an important part of the cultural landscape. We are talking a dedicated jazz club, and cities like London, New York, Paris and Berlin have long boasted such venues.
Post war Sydney has always had a thriving jazz scene but not always the spaces where both established and up and coming players could show off their talents. The legendary, but tiny El Rocco jazz cellar in Kings Cross, hosted some wonderful musicians back in the 1960s. Since then it’s been mainly makeshift pubs, clubs and bars that have provided a stage for local jazz artists – and often only two or three nights a week.
So in 2013 when Foundry616 opened in Harris Street, Ultimo, the city welcomed what was its first dedicated jazz venue, programming six to seven days a week. The club was the brainchild of jazz aficionado Peter Rechniewski along with his wife Elizabeth. As Peter recalled in a City Hub interview some years ago:
“I’d been thinking about opening a venue for jazz and associated music for some time. I wanted to create a place that was intimate, comfortable, with great atmosphere and good acoustics. In the early period of the project, I had a partner and we looked around for about two years, missing out on several very good spaces. In late 2011 we stumbled across what is now Foundry616 in Harris Street Ultimo, just up from the ABC.”
As the co-founder of SIMA (The Sydney Improvised Music Association) and a booker for jazz gigs at venues such as Jenny’s Wine Bar and the Strawberry Hills Hotel, Peter was well credentialled to open his own club. Over the past dozen years Foundry has hosted a multitude of local and international musicians with many memorable nights, spanning a wide range of genres within the broad church of jazz.
A few weeks ago came the announcement that Foundry would be closing at the end of June with the club admitting that they had been struggling to “cope effectively in the very challenging post-Covid trading environment”. The news was greeted with both shock and disappointment from both musicians and punters alike and now leaves a huge gap in the local jazz scene.
The possibility of a hipster jazz knight in shining armour arriving at the last minute to take over the club is always a possibility, but rising rental and other inflationary costs make running a specialist music venue in Sydney a daunting task these days.
There are lots of small bars and pub rooms that occasionally feature jazz in Sydney but very few have what is often an essential item in hosting such music. That’s a piano, ideally a grand as is the case with Foundry, and that rules out many piano based groups and visiting international artists. Ironically in the so called ‘Year Of The Piano’ we have lost a venue that offered one of the best in town.
In recent years smaller spaces such as Monday Night Confessions in Camperdown and Local Edition in Glebe have opened, albeit one night a week, to provide a performance space for various jazz artists. Losing a dedicated jazz venue may encourage the opening of similar spaces or simply make it even harder for musicians to find a venue.
When Foundry opened in 2013, the evergreen pianist Mike Nock was its very first artist and it seems only fitting that he will play a night to mark the closing of the club on Friday 27 June. It’s not exactly the very last night, there’s a final gig with Anna Weaving on Saturday 28, but it will certainly be an ‘end of an era’ celebration. Like many musicians and punters alike, Mike sees the impending closure of Foundry616 as a major blow to Sydney’s creative music scene and recently stated:
“Presenting my music regularly at Foundry616 from the club’s 2013 opening, has been an exceptional pleasure and a highlight of my musical career since my 1986 return from the USA. Peter Rechniewski’s commitment to musical excellence has seen his club consistently feature the best local and international artists available and become the premier venue to both play and listen to quality jazz in Sydney.”
Fittingly Mike will be joined by three of his favourite musicians in Karl Laskowski, Brett Hirst and Toby Hall. Collectively they have played a multitude of dates at Foundry and are bound to farewell the club in style. A great night to celebrate a sad loss!
