This splendid evening at Foundry 616 prompted many mixed feelings. It featured the penultimate performance at this legendary jazz venue, scheduled to close its doors the following evening, on Saturday, June 28. It presented perhaps the most iconic musician in Australian jazz, pianist Mike Nock, who had performed many times in Foundry over its 12-year history, with a variety of accompanying musicians. On this occasion his quartet included Karl Laskowski (tenor saxophone), Brett Hirst (double bass), and Toby Hall (drums).
As usual club owner Peter Rechniewski introduced the musicians. This occasion was celebratory but at the same time filled with a degree of sadness. Rechniewski was entitled to bask in the sold out audience’s admiration, given Foundry’s 12 years of service to the Sydney jazz community. He expressed thanks to those to whom he owed a particular debt, such as his wife Liz Rechniewski, and Jane March, harking back to the old days of the Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA), where Peter Rechniewski was artistic director for 28 years. March was given much-deserved credit for keeping SIMA alive during some difficult years.
Rechniewski also alluded to difficulties which confronted Foundry over the years, given that social change had not been kind to the sort of jazz venue that Foundry aspired to be. Many things militated against Foundry’s success: the fact that the young audience was increasingly difficult to contend with; the decline in alcohol consumption, which undermined the club’s business model; and in a moment of self-deprecation, Rechniewski acknowledged that, in the challenging post Covid era, its possible he needed greater business skills to overcome difficulties.
As for the music presented on this historic occasion, it was a supreme example of Mike Nock’s unique music. This was my first opportunity for some time to hear a full complement of his compositions performed by a quartet completely on top of Nock’s oeuvre.
To my great regret I never heard Mike Nock play live at Sydney’s El Rocco, where in the late 1950s he played there as an 18-year-old shortly after arriving from New Zealand, having stowed away on a trans-Tasman ship. The writer John Clare refers to a “small and rather goblin-shaped New Zealand pianist who played as though his bum was on fire”. However, recordings from the El Rocco era are available and, now having heard Nock aged 84, despite the palpable evolution of his music over the years, I conclude that in some senses not a great deal has changed.
Nock still has in his playing an infectious mixture of hot attack and warm lyricism, which helps to explain his broad appeal. As the performance went on, particularly during the second set, I began to decipher a flavour in his playing that I can only describe as “blues-drenched”. As Nock didn’t name his compositions as they went by, I’m unable to document them, but I can say that I often heard the welcome sounds of Keith Jarrett-style gospel chord changes.
I have no problem with artists letting the music speak for itself, as the more such a performance goes on, the more one feels that naming the tunes might interrupt what is now becoming a genuine musical experience that’s good for the soul. In other words the music supersedes verbalising about it. In that case, by all means let the music speak for itself.
The characteristic approach of this quartet was typified in the concert’s opening tune Not We But One, the title track of Nock’s 1997 Naxos album. Once the music is in tempo the quartet would adopt what I can only describe as a type of 16-feel, similar to that of a fusion group, except that unlike fusion where musical interplay appears to be somewhat mechanical, Nock’s group always exhibited the sort of freedom and potential for interaction which gives jazz its flexibility, its heart and soul.
I gather that the so-called “broken time” approach of double bassists dates back to the combination of bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams with the Miles Davis band. Brett Hirst is a supreme exponent of this approach, and he was amply supported by drummer Toby Hall who, while unerringly articulating the time, played so freely that one felt the music could go in any of several directions. In this way, a delightful, interesting unpredictability was always present in the music. With this sort of flexible rhythmic approach, Nock’s music was always light and dancing.
Given the shock of Foundry’s closure, I was struck during the evening by a pang of regret that the Jazz Co-ordination Association of NSW (JCANSW), one of the two most successful jazz organisations in the country throughout the 80s and 90s – the other being SIMA – did not survive, as SIMA has survived to this day.
Ironically the JCANSW, at the time of its demise, was on the brink of what might have been a successful campaign for a funded venue to be established in Sydney. Two representatives of highly successful European funded venues: Huub van Riel (the Bimhuis, Amsterdam) and Lars Thorborg (the Copenhagen Jazzhouse) visited Australia in 1998 and 2000 respectively, so their detailed advice on the benefits to the jazz community of government funds going to their venues (AUD600,000 annually in 2018 in Amsterdam; and AUD400,000 in 2000 in Copenhagen) was available. Unfortunately that advice was never seriously canvassed with the relevant funding authorities.
Both van Riel and Thorborg argued that, given the nature of jazz as an art form, a venue presenting jazz along commercial lines could never generate enough income to cover costs. Without government support Foundry 616 found its endeavours over 12 years an uphill battle and, despite its solid achievements, its ultimate demise can be seen as proof that the theories expounded by van Riel and Thorborg were sound indeed.
This performance took place at Foundry 616, 616 Harris Street, Ultimo, on June 27, 2025. It featured the Mike Nock Quartet, including Nock (piano), Brett Hirst (double bass), Toby Hall (drums), and Karl Laskowski (tenor saxophone).
