ALBANY STREET JAZZ LOFT

Are you a lover of jazz music? Are you tired of fusty ol’ brass bands and hearing the Girl from Ipanema for the 900th time? Would you love to see a more cool and quirky space spring up with some cutting edge, sublime, stimulating and quality contemporary jazz… in Dunedin? 

Run by musicians for musicians, the ALBANY STREET JAZZ LOFT is an exciting new project brought to you by JAZZ Dunedin: Events & Experiences; an initiative of the Dunedin Jazz, Cabaret and Performing Arts Trust. 

THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN...

We want to launch the inaugural programme - a series of SIX events - but need your help to get this great idea (literally) off the ground.

We’ve found the perfect pop-up place in the intimate, quirky and hidden away upstairs space at the iconic Playhouse Theatre on the fringes of Central Dunedin and we’ve curated an exciting and eclectic array of interesting local and national ensembles all waiting to play in this RETRO cafe/ salon/ cabaret-style listening setting.

The ALBANY Street JAZZ LOFT will be a GEM OF A PLACE. Independently run and a hotbed of sound, creativity and good vibes where you can bring your beards and wear your skivvies, play a game of chess or draughts or pick-up-sticks, dip into our library of Hemmingway or Sartre, Kerouac or Baxter and click your fingers at the coolest happening jazz scene around. It’s all about the hang. But seriously, stereotypes aside (and don’t worry we know we're living in 2021 not 1964!) we invite YOU to take a punt and get on board the culture train! Artists need this and so do audiences (even if they don't know it yet!)

This project has oodles of benefits and scope: it supports the Dunedin jazz and improvised music community;  supports the development of a more robust touring circuit for visiting artists, which in turn expands performance opportunities for the wider New Zealand jazz and improvised music community. We know lots of musicians really want to come to Dunedin but need a project like this to help get them down here.

The project will also help develop and broaden awareness and appreciation of this vital art form and this provides artists with the confidence to push their own work and innovate musically knowing there is an appreciative and interested audience in the room who want to listen. It's a symbiotic relationship!

The Albany Street Jazz Loft aims to create a relaxed, intimate and welcoming scene where the ‘membership’ of musicians, aficionados and the curious commune in a warm, fresh and musically intriguing environment. The upstairs ‘loft’ space provides the perfect environment acoustically and atmospherically for this to happen. It's a small space and that's why we need your help.

While jazz often has a particular music tradition at its core, the range of jazz regularly presented in Dunedin often seems to lack artistic diversity and this initiative aims to provide a crucial platform to offer a wider experimental, crossover and/or boundary-pushing opportunity for New Zealand artists to create and present more exploratory and original work, with a focus on high quality professional or emergent craft.

Your donation will assist in helping to guarantee a performance fee for musicians, maybe support travel, as well as helping to cover running costs for the success of the Albany Street Jazz Loft in 2021 and beyond. Your support counts and we thank you!