Stadium Rockdale Explores Sydney’s Boundary-Pushing Experimental Jazz Scene

How much do you know about Sydney’s experimental jazz scene?

In recent years this community of boundary-pushing musicians has become increasingly visible throughout the city’s music landscape.

Integrating classical techniques, electronic production, and bold improvisation – and often performing in unconventional DIY spaces – improvised jazz has cultivated a progressively younger and more adventurous audience.

Only in May last year GODTET – an electronic jazz quartet and figurehead of this movement – performed at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

This acceptance of free experimental music onto one of the country’s most recognised stages proved that music coming from this community – once considered marginal – is of an astounding quality worthy of our attention.

But before they can reach these heights, experimental musicians need grassroots venues to experiment and perform in. Within an increasingly hostile rental environment, this is becoming an ever more difficult task. Fortunately, though, there are heroic individuals who – scattered throughout the city – work hard to sustain such vital spaces.

On Tuesday January 13th, as I entered the ironically named Stadium Rockdale, I knew this venue was one of those.

Located no more than one-hundred metres from Rockdale train station, the entrance to Stadium Rockdale was easily lost within the smattering of convenience stores, bakeries and massage parlours. Though once I located the narrow door and navigated the steep staircase, the trouble of finding the venue was instantly forgotten.

At the top of the stairs the space opened into what felt more like a living room than a music venue. A tapestry hung on one wall, while a bookshelf ran across the other. Between the walls, warm fairy-lights played over a drum kit, around a PA system, and through a vast collection of instruments.

There was little formality to the space. The audience had the choice of either sitting on a long couch, a small collection of fold-out chairs, or cushions laid out on the carpet before the instruments.

Once the twenty-or-so audience members (almost the full capacity of the tiny room) had found their various positions, with little fanfare the night’s first act — saxophonist Hinano Fujisaki and double-bassist Dominic Nguyen – rose from the audience, picked their instruments from the carpet and simply, began. The duo – who had never played together before today – delivered thirty minutes of drifting experimentation. Fujisaki spun an almost constant mournful tone from her instrument – remaining predominantly soft, low and on the edge of silence. Meanwhile, atop Fujisaki’s bed, Nguyen exercised his fingers over the neck of his bass.

Swapping between an array of techniques, the bassist would juxtapose each with the last. He would contrast shrill peaks with roaring lows, meditative bows with sharp sudden thumps. Lost within their music, the two finally looked up at the other. With a shy smile they nodded. Finished.

Following Fujisaki and Nguyen, Jetrio – a trio of Sean Valenzuela (piano), Blain Cunneen (guitar) and Alex Inman-Hislop (synth/drums) – arrived before the audience. Like the previous act, this trio’s music worked with stark contrasts of slow repetition and fast explosions of sound. Yet much else of the act sat worlds apart from the gentle performance of the openers.

Fast, repetitive progressions on an upright piano rose from Valenzuela’s fingers while Inman-Hislop – his right hand at times dancing over the keys of his synth – accompanied the piano’s rhythm with simple but wildly effective drums. Together, the two built looping rhythms impossible not to move to.

And through this, Cunneen – switching between guitar and bass – coloured the beat with strings of loud delay and reverb. Angrily he would strum his strings, or elegantly he would weave long, slowly drawn-out riffs.

In such a small space, the combined music filled the room completely. It was a sound that – as I noticed the bowed heads and closed eyes around me – was impossible not to feel. Finally, after almost an hour, when the trio concluded, there was no dramatic bow, nor a grand exit. The three musicians merely thanked us for coming, rose from their places on stage and rejoined their friends in the audience.

The modesty and informality of the evening was beautiful. The camaraderie between the various jazz musicians both on and off stage was clear in the laughs and embraces around me.

And the necessity of spaces like this – to platform and inspire artists of tonight’s calibre – was lucidly paramount.

Stadium Rockdale hosts their regular Jetset performance series Tuesdays every fortnight.