The lack of jazz venues in Sydney is an ongoing problem that has been much discussed without any significant improvement. We recently reported on proposed amendments to the NSW Liquor Act which, if passed, would result in some venues able to get the appropriate approval for significantly less than the tens of thousands it currently costs for a nightclub license. We will have to wait until after the 24 March state election before there are any further developments on that front.
Meanwhile, pianist Sean Wayland, who has returned to Sydney from New York for a brief visit, has written to the NSW Premier Morris Iemma expressing frustration at what he sees as the limited opportunities afforded jazz musicians in the country’s largest city.
Before he left for the US, Sean, was an active promoter of contemporary jazz in Sydney, leading the then nascent Jazzgroove Association and was the driving force behind the collective that presented live music at Café de Lane, an intimate upstairs venue in the inner city.
We reprint Sean’s letter with his permission and welcome your views on the subject. Please address correspondence to editor@jazz.org.au
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Dear Sir ,
I am a professional musician and composer. I am an Australian citizen born in Sydney and now living in New York in the United States. In 1994 I completed a Diploma of Jazz from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I also have a Masters degree in music performance from the Australian Institute of Music. I have a successful international career as a musician, primarily as a jazz pianist. I have performed in Sydney for over 15 years, and have constantly been frustrated by the difficulty here in finding adequate venues to perform.
Over the years, I have put a great deal of effort into improving the situation. I was the first president of the Jazzgroove Association www.jazzgroove.com.au . I have been a committee member of SIMA and have also promoted music nights at various venues, such as The Basement and Café de Lane in Surry Hills. The difficulty of finding a decent place to perform regularly is one of the reasons why I felt it necessary to move overseas.
Due to unforeseen circumstances I have recently found myself “stuck” in Sydney for a couple of weeks. Unable to get a flight out, and with the rent needed to be paid in New York, I was hoping to find a place to put on a performance at short notice.
I have been spending a bit of time at the Conservatorium, practising the piano and catching up with old friends there. The newly constructed Conservatorium is a wonderful environment for studying music. Craig Scott, the head of the Jazz Department there told me that it was possible to hire a venue at the Conservatorium to perform in. There is a poster in the lobby with a picture of a musician playing clarinet and a big sign saying “Jazz at the Café”. I enquired as to the cost of hiring the venue. It is $400 ($362 plus G.S.T ) for venue hire plus $100 to use the piano and $154 plus GST to have it tuned. I asked about using the sound system and was told, “The P.A has just been installed and isn’t working yet. If you need one, you would have to bring your own.” I would need to use a PA system to amplify the piano. I can reasonably expect 50 to 100 people to pay $10 to see me play. When you take out $700 to hire the venue and add in say $200 to hire a PA, you wouldn’t be left with much money to pay the musicians, if any. It would probably cost money to perform.
From what I can gather this purpose-built “venue” is very rarely used and seems to me to be a dreadful waste of taxpayers’ money. I feel sorry for the current jazz students at the Conservatorium as I feel that, after they leave, things will get worse for them rather than better. They get to study and perform in well-designed rooms on concert instruments, and when they leave, these opportunities disappear. Our young (and old) jazz musicians are simply not getting enough opportunities to perform. In New York an ambitious bandleader can fairly easily perform with his/her group twice a month without too much trouble. In Sydney, one can expect about four performances a year or so. As a pianist, one can also expect that most opportunities in Sydney will require the pianist to bring an “electric piano”, which is far from adequate. Other venues which we often have to perform in are “bars” where half the patrons have not come to hear the music and talk loudly over the music.
I think it would be more sensible for the students to be studying in a tin shed and then getting to perform in a place like the Conservatorium when they graduate, not the other way around. To me it is a great shame that in the evenings, the Conservatorium is largely empty. It should be being used to give Sydney-siders and tourists the opportunity to hear talented local musicians. We also have the Opera House in Sydney, and I suspect that a great deal of the performances there are financially possible due to the relatively large amounts of government funding (compared to jazz) which is given to the classical orchestras. It is simply too expensive for a jazz group to perform there without a budget for advertising and venue hire. The present situation where it is prohibitively expensive to hire venues at the Conservatorium to me is a great shame and should be rectified if possible.
I personally don’t think that it is the Government’s duty to pay musicians salaries. However, considering that the Government provides roads for truck drivers, hospitals for doctors, law courts for lawyers etc, which are generally affordable for them, it is a shame that musicians should have to fund their music venues out of their own pocket.
Please email me or call me if you have a chance. I would love the opportunity to discuss this with you further, and to work on a solution.
Sincerely yours
Sean Wayland
Sean performs at Wine Banq on Wednesday, 14 March at 8.30pm. His band is made up of James Muller (guitar), Mike Majowski (bass) and James Waples (drums).
Read our Q&A with Sean originally published in December.
Photo: Eddie Malone
