Following a year of severe flux to its music scene, Sydney could certainly use with a more positive spin on its live music scene following twelve months that seemed like a tale of two cities, as the City of Sydney council attempted to re-energise its culture while the State Government tightened its grip on venue restrictions.
The CBD is set to get a new live music venue that is set to broach the gulf between the two, with news that Sydney Casino The Star is getting a new 4,000 capacity room this month, intended as a versatile space capable of hosting corporate functions, awards ceremonies, and most exciting of all, concerts and performances.
The Age reports that the new Event Centre, located within the casino complex, will open on January 24th with a concert by John ‘The Last Time’ Farnham, and promoters and managers of the new room are looking to book more contemporary acts for the space, which features multiple levels of seating, a state-of-the-art sound set-up, acoustic panelled walls, and a glass roof of 1,000 LEDs of backlit colour seen from across the Sydney CBD.
Promoter Michael Chugg indicated that the new venue could accomodate anything from Mushroom’s own rising stars The Rubens, through to more established Australian talent like Paul Kelly, The Presets, or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who have chosen Sydney Opera House as the space for their latest Australian tour, promoting album #15 Push Away The Sky.
Whether it would or not would pivot on “what section of the potential concertgoers would see it as uncool and what genres of music would work there,” says Chugg, indicating that both concert promoters and gig-goers would need to look past the stigma of the casino complex. “I would consider is the kind of acts that are being booked in there and the perception punters have of the space.” – Joel Connolly, The Rubens manager.
An anonymous manager of ‘several leading local acts’ also tells The Age that getting acts to play at The Star “‘presents tricky questions on positioning… [it] certainly adds another layer of contemplation.”
“For many clients on my roster we simply know that their audiences won’t be attracted to the experience of attending a show at the casino,” says the un-named manager. “You would hope the lure of a show would transcend any of these issues. And that will come down to the vibe in the room itself, ease of accessibility, sound quality – and the degree to which the venue will appear to be a separate entity to the casino itself.”
It may be an issue of ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ however, as in a city that struggles to provide mid-sized platforms for emerging bands, a 4,000 seat capacity room is the perfect between the likes of the State and Opera House, before the leap to the arena-sized capacities of Allphones Arena and Hordern Pavilion.
The Rubens’ manager, Joel Connolly, also stressed that when acts need to move to bigger stages, the choices are limited. “Would I have a problem putting a band in a place called the Event Centre? Not really,” says Connolly. “What I would consider is the kind of acts that are being booked in there and the perception punters have of the space. The truth is, when you get up to venues that size, there aren’t any ‘cool’ options.”
The scale of venues continues to be an issue in the city, especially given the recent controversy surrounding the downsizing of the Sydney Entertainment Centre, with local industry criticising the reduction from 12,000 seats to 8,000 – as part of a $1 billion makeover – as ‘too small’.
