NAKED CITY: THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF… JAZZ!
Back in the 1960s the Australian Jazz Convention celebrated the boom in traditional jazz with a classic New Orleans style parade through Surry Hills. Streets were closed off and hundreds of musicians and fans created a cacophony of sound as they descended on the old Railway Institute building at Central.
A half century has passed since those heady days when jazz, the folk boom and blues oriented rock all competed for the hearts and minds of the young music lover. Jazz has undergone many stylistic changes and the Sydney jazz scene has seen many different clubs and festivals come and go.
During the 1980s the laissez faire licensing laws that flourished under the reign of crime and corruption were a bonus for many of Sydney’s flourishing jazz clubs. The Paradise Jazz Cellar in Kings Cross may well have been owned by gangsters but stayed open until the wee small hours and was a popular jamming venue for musicians from all over town, seven days a week.
The 1990s and early 2000s were less romantic when it came to late night haunts and jazz clubs were often thin on the ground however a change was brewing with groups such as SIMA and the Jazzgroove Association staging regular gigs and fostering the increasing number of young talented jazz musicians. Whilst SIMA established the Sound Lounge as a regular home for improvised music, in Surry Hills the informal “loft” scene was gaining impetus.
Reminiscent of New York’s thriving jazz loft scene of the 1970s, venues such as the old 505, a warehouse space in the labyrinth of Hibernian House, were attracting hundreds of young jazz fans each week – all by word of mouth and email. Other loft venues in Surry Hills began staging their own jazz gigs and many young musicians took up residence in the comparatively cheap warehouse spaces.
With the new 505 Venue, a dedicated jazz club in Cleveland Street, jam sessions at the Gaelic and a continuation of the loft culture, Surry Hills has once again become Sydney’s jazz village (Clover Moore take note) and the spirit of the old Australian Jazz Convention will echo when the Jazzgroove Summer Festival takes over the hood this coming weekend.
Running from Friday 13th to Sunday 15th the Festival features club shows, pub shows, workshops, talks, a free kids concerts at Redfern Town Hall, a free outdoor acoustic concert in Prince Alfred Park and a festival gala night at the Tom Mann Theatre. The event highlights the incredible pool of both young and established jazz talent both in Sydney and from around the country and features artists such as the Gian Slater Trio, the Coffin Brothers, the James Muller Trio, The Cooking Club, Adam Ponting, The MFW, the Chuck Yates Trio, 20th Century Dog, the Waples Bros, Mango Balloon, the Mike Rivett Quintet, the Warwick Alder Quintet, Abel Cross & The Neo-Bop Quintet, the Cope Street Parade, Song Fwaa, the A.C.R.O.N.Y.M Orchestra, the Alister Spence Trio, the Zac Hurren Trio, the Glorious Sousaphonics, the Sun Chasers Collective, The World According To James and Lah-Lah. Further info at: www.jazzgroove.com
