Dubbed the "Albany Street Jazz Loft", the idea is to use the empty loft of the Playhouse Theatre and fill it with the effervescent burble of "cutting edge, sublime, stimulating and quality contemporary jazz". The group behind it is the Dunedin Jazz, Cabaret & Performing Arts Trust, which formed in 2014 with the goal of bringing more touring jazz musicians to Dunedin. The project aims to provide an environment for edgier jazz, the jazz on the fringes, different from what you might typically see. "I mean there’s a lot of swing, there’s a lot of bebop or jazz orchestra kind of music, but I don’t think there’s enough variety of jazz. "But that doesn’t mean that people have had to go to jazz school or learned their chops from jazz musicians necessarily to earn a place within the jazz milieu, in my opinion."

Source: Otago Daily Times June 13, 2021 16:41 UTC