Latest news with #Teeks
The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘This is a hall for everyone': The hidden Sydney venue that turned its boardroom into a rave cave
For a marathon six hours last Saturday, the City Recital Hall in the heart of central Sydney reverberated with the beats of more than a dozen musicians belting out electro, indie and funk tunes to a crowd of hundreds. Cult queer party Heaps Gay took over the foyer with a DJ deck, pink fluorescent lights and bare-chested mannequins, seats were yanked out of the cavernous auditorium to make way for a laser-lit dance floor, and the recital hall's usual boardroom was transformed into a heaving rave cave. The day-into-night Sound Escape party – flanked by recent performances from Mississippi disco gospel ensemble Annie and the Caldwells, Maori soul singer Teeks, Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp, and US alternative pop singer Joan As A Police Woman – was a far cry from the Baroque strains of Vivaldi, Bach and Handel long associated with the Angel Place venue. It's a bold shift that the hall's chief executive, Kate Wickett, hopes is a harbinger of a more diverse and contemporary musical repertoire – and audience – to occupy the venue. Wickett, a former lawyer and consultant who ran Sydney WorldPride 2023, is one year into the job after she was asked to increase the number of performances, broadening the audience beyond classical enthusiasts, expanding the music genres on offer, and amplifying the decades-old institution's role in Sydney's cultural fabric. 'We have world-renowned acoustics, but it's about diversifying the types of music we play here,' Wickett said. 'We love our key presenters the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Musica Viva, Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera. That is one type of music – classical – which is what we were purpose-built for, but it's really about bringing in new audiences to experience the hall.' Wickett's mission to transform the venue faces a raft of challenges. Chief among them is the hall's failure to bounce back after the pandemic crippled live shows: It is only utilised to about half its capacity. Loading Adding to the obstacles are high living costs, which have softened ticket sales, and the fact its primary audience – though loyal – is small and ageing. Also, the hall's location, tucked in the laneways between George and Pitt streets, means it is often overlooked. 'We're a hidden gem, we're just too hidden,' Wickett said. 'For such a brilliant, centrally located hall, and for such a high-quality venue and beautiful asset, to be empty for half of the year is challenging. 'We want to share it; this is a hall for everyone.' To that end, Wickett's team is forging ahead with a shake-up of the venue's program to include more diverse and emerging artists, while staying committed to its classical roots and seeking to maximise the hall's adaptability for events. 'Classical is extremely important to us. But we've been perceived at times as being only for classical and not accessible to different kinds of music, and we're trying to head that off by bringing in a variety of different performers. 'It's about electronic, classical, bands, choral, showcasing the versatility of the hall and the opportunity for us to bring new people in to experience it.' Last year, the venue staged its first 'seats out' performances, removing seats in the stalls to allow the audience to dance to French disco legend Cerrone and Los Angeles hip-hop pioneers the Pharcyde. In contrast, Tangerine Dream and Soccer Mommy performed this week, and coming concerts of Beethoven and Mozart sit alongside acclaimed Kirtan artist Radhika Das. Wickett said her team was bent on drawing crowds that were younger, who might not have visited the hall, and were from diverse cultural backgrounds. 'We are in the centre of Sydney, and it's about bringing people here from all different parts of the city, different diasporas, and activating this precinct so we can become a beacon of music for people, and really good quality music.' Wickett also believes the venue's location smack-bang in the centre of the city, behind the Ivy precinct and between railway stations, means a boost in attendance would also be a boon to surrounding bars, clubs and restaurants. 'It's the concept of all boats rising; if we do well, so do our neighbours.' Wickett says she's also not interested in competing with other cultural institutions, such as the Opera House or Capitol Theatre, saying the various performance venues 'complement each other. We each do different things'. Loading The recital hall has been used for corporate events, and for filming: It played a starring role in the ABC series The Piano and an episode of NCIS: Sydney. The 1238-seat recital hall opened at the base of the 30-storey Angel Place office block in 1999 to meet demand for a new mid-size performance venue. Unlike the Melbourne Recital Centre, which receives several million dollars from the Victorian government each year, the City Recital Hall is a City of Sydney asset – the council holds a 99-year lease for the venue from developer Mirvac – and is run by a non-profit organisation. The upshot is that the recital hall does not receive any ongoing funding from state or federal governments. In March, the City of Sydney decided to provide $1 million in funding each year until 2030 – an increase of $300,000 a year based on the previous five-year agreement with the council. About 85 per cent of the hall's income was generated from ticket sales, bar sales, hire fees and other services in 2023-24. Less than 1 per cent of its income was gleaned from philanthropic donations. Wickett describes the funding arrangement as 'really challenging', and she has been lobbying Chris Minns' government – which has pursued policies to encourage live music and reboot the 24-hour economy – to chip in funds. 'Currently, we rely on funding from the City of Sydney and organic growth, but a real investment in programming, for both local and some international acts, would provide that step change for us to increase utilisation,' she said. Arts, Music and Night-time Economy Minister John Graham said the hall was a 'fantastic venue, in a great location, with some of the best acoustics in Sydney', but the government's primary responsibility was to fund state-run venues and help them recover and thrive after the pandemic. Loading Graham said the government had provided targeted financial support to the recital hall, including COVID recovery funding and sound system upgrades. He also revealed that the recital hall would benefit from a $250,000 Sound NSW grant to upgrade its audiovisual systems and hearing loop. 'High-quality theatres like the City Recital Hall are a vital element of our night-time economy and our cultural life. They can host contemporary and classical music, talks, film and cultural events – which drive business for the surrounding hospitality venues,' Graham said. Despite the challenges, Wickett remains upbeat about the opportunities ahead. She said the hall had been utilised 198 days in the 2024-25 financial year, up from 179 days two years earlier. She also remains convinced of the role the venue can play in fostering the capacity for live music to connect people from various parts of society, especially in fractious times. 'It's so important for a space like this hall to bring people from different backgrounds, or diasporas, or parts of the community, who can come together and have a really connected and joyous experience,' Wickett said.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘This is a hall for everyone': The hidden Sydney venue that turned its boardroom into a rave cave
For a marathon six hours last Saturday, the City Recital Hall in the heart of central Sydney reverberated with the beats of more than a dozen musicians belting out electro, indie and funk tunes to a crowd of hundreds. Cult queer party Heaps Gay took over the foyer with a DJ deck, pink fluorescent lights and bare-chested mannequins, seats were yanked out of the cavernous auditorium to make way for a laser-lit dance floor, and the recital hall's usual boardroom was transformed into a heaving rave cave. The day-into-night Sound Escape party – flanked by recent performances from Mississippi disco gospel ensemble Annie and the Caldwells, Maori soul singer Teeks, Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp, and US alternative pop singer Joan As A Police Woman – was a far cry from the Baroque strains of Vivaldi, Bach and Handel long associated with the Angel Place venue. It's a bold shift that the hall's chief executive, Kate Wickett, hopes is a harbinger of a more diverse and contemporary musical repertoire – and audience – to occupy the venue. Wickett, a former lawyer and consultant who ran Sydney WorldPride 2023, is one year into the job after she was asked to increase the number of performances, broadening the audience beyond classical enthusiasts, expanding the music genres on offer, and amplifying the decades-old institution's role in Sydney's cultural fabric. 'We have world-renowned acoustics, but it's about diversifying the types of music we play here,' Wickett said. 'We love our key presenters the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Musica Viva, Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera. That is one type of music – classical – which is what we were purpose-built for, but it's really about bringing in new audiences to experience the hall.' Wickett's mission to transform the venue faces a raft of challenges. Chief among them is the hall's failure to bounce back after the pandemic crippled live shows: It is only utilised to about half its capacity. Loading Adding to the obstacles are high living costs, which have softened ticket sales, and the fact its primary audience – though loyal – is small and ageing. Also, the hall's location, tucked in the laneways between George and Pitt streets, means it is often overlooked. 'We're a hidden gem, we're just too hidden,' Wickett said. 'For such a brilliant, centrally located hall, and for such a high-quality venue and beautiful asset, to be empty for half of the year is challenging. 'We want to share it; this is a hall for everyone.' To that end, Wickett's team is forging ahead with a shake-up of the venue's program to include more diverse and emerging artists, while staying committed to its classical roots and seeking to maximise the hall's adaptability for events. 'Classical is extremely important to us. But we've been perceived at times as being only for classical and not accessible to different kinds of music, and we're trying to head that off by bringing in a variety of different performers. 'It's about electronic, classical, bands, choral, showcasing the versatility of the hall and the opportunity for us to bring new people in to experience it.' Last year, the venue staged its first 'seats out' performances, removing seats in the stalls to allow the audience to dance to French disco legend Cerrone and Los Angeles hip-hop pioneers the Pharcyde. In contrast, Tangerine Dream and Soccer Mommy performed this week, and coming concerts of Beethoven and Mozart sit alongside acclaimed Kirtan artist Radhika Das. Wickett said her team was bent on drawing crowds that were younger, who might not have visited the hall, and were from diverse cultural backgrounds. 'We are in the centre of Sydney, and it's about bringing people here from all different parts of the city, different diasporas, and activating this precinct so we can become a beacon of music for people, and really good quality music.' Wickett also believes the venue's location smack-bang in the centre of the city, behind the Ivy precinct and between railway stations, means a boost in attendance would also be a boon to surrounding bars, clubs and restaurants. 'It's the concept of all boats rising; if we do well, so do our neighbours.' Wickett says she's also not interested in competing with other cultural institutions, such as the Opera House or Capitol Theatre, saying the various performance venues 'complement each other. We each do different things'. Loading The recital hall has been used for corporate events, and for filming: It played a starring role in the ABC series The Piano and an episode of NCIS: Sydney. The 1238-seat recital hall opened at the base of the 30-storey Angel Place office block in 1999 to meet demand for a new mid-size performance venue. Unlike the Melbourne Recital Centre, which receives several million dollars from the Victorian government each year, the City Recital Hall is a City of Sydney asset – the council holds a 99-year lease for the venue from developer Mirvac – and is run by a non-profit organisation. The upshot is that the recital hall does not receive any ongoing funding from state or federal governments. In March, the City of Sydney decided to provide $1 million in funding each year until 2030 – an increase of $300,000 a year based on the previous five-year agreement with the council. About 85 per cent of the hall's income was generated from ticket sales, bar sales, hire fees and other services in 2023-24. Less than 1 per cent of its income was gleaned from philanthropic donations. Wickett describes the funding arrangement as 'really challenging', and she has been lobbying Chris Minns' government – which has pursued policies to encourage live music and reboot the 24-hour economy – to chip in funds. 'Currently, we rely on funding from the City of Sydney and organic growth, but a real investment in programming, for both local and some international acts, would provide that step change for us to increase utilisation,' she said. Arts, Music and Night-time Economy Minister John Graham said the hall was a 'fantastic venue, in a great location, with some of the best acoustics in Sydney', but the government's primary responsibility was to fund state-run venues and help them recover and thrive after the pandemic. Loading Graham said the government had provided targeted financial support to the recital hall, including COVID recovery funding and sound system upgrades. He also revealed that the recital hall would benefit from a $250,000 Sound NSW grant to upgrade its audiovisual systems and hearing loop. 'High-quality theatres like the City Recital Hall are a vital element of our night-time economy and our cultural life. They can host contemporary and classical music, talks, film and cultural events – which drive business for the surrounding hospitality venues,' Graham said. Despite the challenges, Wickett remains upbeat about the opportunities ahead. She said the hall had been utilised 198 days in the 2024-25 financial year, up from 179 days two years earlier. She also remains convinced of the role the venue can play in fostering the capacity for live music to connect people from various parts of society, especially in fractious times. 'It's so important for a space like this hall to bring people from different backgrounds, or diasporas, or parts of the community, who can come together and have a really connected and joyous experience,' Wickett said.
The Spinoff
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
From Dave Dobbyn to Japanese Breakfast: Reviews from the Auckland Winter Series
Four nights, four gigs, four reasons to love the Auckland Town Hall. Wednesday: Sir Dave Dobbyn The last and only other time I saw Dave Dobbyn live was at a craft beer festival in 2017. He came on around three or four in the afternoon and belted out a no-frills-no-fuss set of all the classic hits you'd want and expect Dave Dobbyn to play, then got out of there. It was your typical Festival Dobbyn experience, i.e. a bloody good time. Wednesday night at the town hall was a different kind of Dobbyn experience, a rare chance for him to tear up the festival setlist and play some deeper cuts from the catalogue. Calling the evening 'Selected Songs' should have been a clear signpost to anyone buying a ticket that this was the direction in which we were heading, though some of my fellow standing section punters were vocally less thrilled than I was to be treated to so many songs off Twist and Lament for the Numb in the first hour. Even those people got what they came for in the end, of course, with a rousing, Tami Nielson and Delaney Davidson-assisted version of 'Welcome Home' closing the set before 'Slice of Heaven' and 'Be Mine Tonight' in the encore. But this was a night for the real Dobbyn heads, and the highlights were plentiful. From the opening chimes of 'Belltower' to the ragged glory of 'Don't Hold Your Breath' to the high note at the end of 'You Oughta Be In Love', this set served as proof that not only has Sir Dave written some of this country's finest songs, he still has what it takes to bring the house down with them. / Calum Henderson Thursday: Teeks There's something a little bit terrifying about watching a performance from an artist whose work relies almost entirely on their voice. Of course, all singers rely on their voices, but most will have other things in a live show to entertain audiences – a band, back-up singers, dancing, even themselves playing an instrument. I watch artists all the time and never consider their voices less valuable because they have a band singing with them, but when I watched Teeks perform to a sold-out Town Hall on Thursday, I realised just how much his live performances live and die by his voice. And the voice delivered. Accompanied by a piano and a string sextet (he has previously performed with the full Auckland Philharmonia), Teeks put on an intimate show, cycling through his EP, album, a few newbies and a few covers of songs you'd expect to hear on a Teeks algorithm playlist – 'Drive' by Bic Runga, 'Landslide', 'Make You Feel My Love' and 'I Can't Make You Love Me'. His voice never faltered, except once when he teared up singing 'Never Be Apart' for his late friend Taryn. If it weren't for the surprisingly rowdy and vocal crowd, there were times when it could have fallen into being genuinely awkward. Teeks can sing – we all know this – but he's not much of a talker. Again, most of the time the banter between songs is barely registered, but when there's so much silence in the music itself, those moments of crowd interaction felt amplified and intimate, and it took Teeks a good hour before he sounded remotely comfortable speaking rather than singing. In the end, the show felt more like a studio session than a Town Hall concert – and I suspect Teeks himself would have preferred that setting. It was most amplified by his invitations for the crowd to sing along to his bigger hits. Have you ever sung along to a live song that only has a piano accompaniment? You don't, is the answer. Because if you did, literally everyone would hear you. It led to some awkward whisper singing from those of us who knew the lyrics but didn't want to be heard by the whole venue. Despite the awkwardness at times, Teeks managed to pull off something few can manage – a full audience captivated by only his voice. Ps. Who would have thought the only genuine encore chant I've heard in nearly five years would be at a Teeks concert? I eagerly await his second album. / Madeleine Chapman Friday: Mall Grab Having had Mall Grab's sets on heavy rotation for the past year, I wasn't just excited to see what he would bring to New Zealand – I was curious to see who else made up his Aotearoa fanbase. The crowd skewed older and more refined than other recent electronic events I've attended – an upper-middle-class, predominantly male group out for a well-curated night. The ample space to dance at the Auckland Town Hall is a rarity at gigs of this calibre. Christchurch producer and DJ Emilie opened with a confident, composed set. Her selections delivered just enough bounce to keep the energy alive without encroaching on headline territory. As a thick mist rolled across the stage, conversation on the dance floor faded. Mall Grab had arrived. He kicked things off with the 133 BPM future-nostalgic stunner Love Reigns – a softer side of his catalogue that still hit hard, setting the tone for a dynamic build throughout the night. The lighting and stage design elevated the entire experience, transforming the town hall into something reminiscent of an international warehouse rave. With punters allowed to gather on either side of the DJ, and a lighting technician absolutely dialled in, the visuals matched the sonic journey beautifully. Moving fluidly between ambient, sample-driven house and modern tech slammers, Mall Grab delivered a sophisticated, deeply textured set. It was a masterclass that spoke not only to his own artistic evolution but to the strength and depth of Melbourne's thriving electronic scene. / Diaz Grimm Saturday: Japanese Breakfast On a weekend where Instagram stories would have you believe every cool indie band in the world was in Barcelona for Primavera, it felt like a huge coup to have Japanese Breakfast in Auckland – especially so soon after the release of their fourth (and for my money best yet) album For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women) (add 'Beardy Men' and I reckon you'd have a pretty good chunk of the audience covered). We had the band Mannequin Pussy to thank for their presence, bandleader Michelle Zauner explained – they came here in 2024 and made her green with envy when they posted pics from Hobbiton (Japanese Breakfast was heading there on Sunday). Thanks also to the show's organisers for choosing the perfect opening act: I went it having never heard locals Phoebe Rings before and left an evangelical fan (check out their new album). Japanese Breakfast is touring as a six-piece band and started their set in campfire mode, sitting around a lantern-lit stage for delicate acoustic FMBASW opener 'Here Is Someone'. But a large gong at the back of the stage suggested the intensity would build, and so it did across a set that balanced the more introspective new album with all the biggest hits of previous albums. 'Picture Window' and piano-led 'Men in Bars' (the drummer filling in for Jeff Bridges on his verse) were highlights off the new album, before Jubilee favourite 'Posing in Bondage' rounded out the main set. Chekhov's gong finally got a working over during the encore ('Paprika'), which would normally be the biggest rock move of the night but here was immediately overshadowed by the pick slides in closer 'Diving Woman'. Good band – I hope they had a really nice time at Hobbiton. / CH
