Sydney jazzes up

It's a good time to be a jazz fan in Sydney, Australia. The city has seen an unprecedented upswing of jazz activity in the recent months - a veritable rebirth of the genre.

The loosening of the council's death grip on live entertainment licensing (the killer of many a venue over the years) has resulted in more jazz nights at established clubs across the city, as well as the emergence of underground joints - such as the ultra-hip 505 - from the shadows into more legitimate locales.

The Sydney Opera House's "Full Swing" series spoiled aficionados last month with a tribute to Nina Simone and gigs from industry giants Wayne Shorter and Branford Marsalis, with a promise of more big names on the way.

March also brought word of a potential new Sydney international jazz festival on the horizon. If it goes ahead the event would take place at multiple venues around town - strongholds such as 505, the Basement and the Sound Lounge, among them - and feature a generous blend of local and international artists.

The news comes hot on the heels of five jazz-themed festivals, from the Kinetic Jazz Festival in Enmore to the Futures Festival in Surry Hills, held in the past three months. At least two more, the Darling Harbour Jazz and Blues Festival and Manly Jazz Festival, are still on the way in 2010.

"What is happening now has been brewing for a while," says Matt McMahon, pianist extraordinaire and someone very much in the thick of things when it comes to Sydney's jazz scene. McMahon is a founding member of the Jazzgroove Association, a non-profit collective that hosts performances at 505 every Tuesday. He also teaches at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and shares on-air duties with Dan Barnett on the weekly 89.7 Eastside-FM jazz radio show, Blow.

If you were among the more than 2,000 people who attended the Wayne Shorter concert, you probably caught McMahon's dynamic opening set. It was the first time his trio had performed on the Concert Hall stage and an opportunity for McMahon to "warm up the crowd" for one of his heroes.

"I'm playing in more situations that are really optimum these days," he says. "At the Sound Lounge, at 505 with a great piano and a nice atmosphere, and the Opera House on a nice big Steinway."

McMahon believes legends like Shorter playing in Sydney help expose jazz to a broader audience, but it is the local musicians and jazz organisers who have really stepped up to make the scene what it is.

He praises people like guitarist John Wardle, a staunch advocate for live music, who "made it his business" to understand and change licensing legislation, and 505 co-founders Kerri Glasscock and Cameron Undy, who took a leap of faith when they decided to take their venue public.

"The fact that they did that energised a lot of people to get behind it," McMahon says. "Sometimes the jazz mentality can be one where people accept that the broader culture is not very interested. But you can actually build something yourself on a small scale that has real meaning for people."

Peter Rechniewski, artistic director of the Sydney Improvised Music Association, sees the opening of a dedicated six-night-a-week venue like 505 as a good first step in breaking the dry spell that has plagued the city in years past.

"That was the biggest problem," Rechniewski says. "We had nowhere for the music to be exposed, week in and week out. When the music is barely visible, it's hard for people to find it and experience it."

Rechniewski, whose own organisation puts on shows every Friday and Saturday night at the Sound Lounge, reckons a couple more dedicated venues, as well as an international festival, would cement jazz as "an exciting art form with new practitioners, capable of capturing the imagination" in Sydney.

It's a task that isn't beyond the capabilities of Sydney's jazz players, asserts McMahon. "Musicians are a little more empowered than they have been in the past. It is always an option to sit back and grumble about the culture. But then you could always go the other way and try to improve things. There seems to be a lot of people doing that, organising gigs and getting things going."

More on jazz? Sydney's top 5 jazz clubs

Subscribe to our Spotify playlists