The Jazz Doof
Jazz meets warehouse party…
Straight from the engine room of Sydney's buzzing @jazzdoof parties, we're delighted to invite the crème de la crème of talent from this emergent and vibrant scene. Think warehouse walls dripping with condensation, bass you feel in your sternum and jazz that's forgotten all the rules. This is where Sydney's most exciting young musicians are rewriting the playbook and now they're bringing it to Bellingen.
Haztet
Spiritual jazz for the dancefloor. This Sydney collective explores a cosmic vastitude of improvised, percussion-driven Afro-infused grooves and layered ambient soundscapes. Fresh from tearing through European festivals in 2024, Haztet bring deep harmonic richness with serious rhythmic heat. Pharoah Sanders meets the warehouse.
Lux Trevis
One person. Eight instruments. Pure psychedelic groove. Producer and multi-instrumentalist Lucas Trevisan draws from funk, jazz, psych-rock, hip-hop, reggae, soul and samba to create nature-inspired instrumental music built for transcendence. A purveyor of psychedelic grooves on a mission to transport you to doof heaven.
Flux State
Born from Sydney's Inner West warehouse parties, this hybrid electronic/acoustic four-piece pairs jazz-infused top lines with slamming electronic beats. Experimental, forward-thinking dance music that's been road-tested in the sweatiest rooms in town. If the dancefloor had a state of mind, this would be it.
The Jazz Social
A Degustation of Sound…
Our Saturday session is a journey through the full spectrum of jazz, from the stomping brass of New Orleans to the hypnotic grooves of Addis Ababa, with some of Australia's most adventurous improvisers in between. Black Jesus Experience make their long-awaited return to Bellingen, while Mastersonics close the night with a dance party designed to get every last person on their feet. Cabaret interludes from SULT Movement and a killer jazz-hip hop soundtrack from DJ Peret von Sturmer keep the temperature just right between courses.
DJ Peret von Sturmer
Amuse bouche - served throughout the evening. Peret - a Bello local and award-winning composer, sound designer and DJ - curates a vinyl-spun selection drawn from the same dusty crate of rare-groove jazz that 90s hip hop producers once mined with such devotion, the kind of hard bop, modal and soul-jazz sides that found second lives beneath the boom-bap of A Tribe Called Quest and their hip hop brethren. A cool, head-nodding serving of rhythm connecting each dish to the next.
William Street
First course - a bold, generous opener designed to wake the appetite and set the table rattling. This local brass band serves up New Orleans second line in heaping, unapologetic portions. Fat brass, snapping snare and rolling sousaphone deliver equal measures of swagger, stomp and swing.
Second course - the mood shifts, the lights lower. ARIA Award-winning saxophonist and composer Jeremy Rose reunites with pianist Novak Manojlovic, drummer Tully Ryan and modular synth artist Ben Carey Jeremy Rose for a set that draws on their critically acclaimed album Infiniti II, a hypnotic exploration into the outer edges of jazz, ambient and electronic music. Layered, textured and deeply contemplative, this is contemporary improvised music of the highest order. As both band leader and label boss of Earshift Music, Rose has been hailed by the Sydney Morning Herald as a musician transforming the Australian contemporary jazz scene. This course rewards the attentive diner.
SULT Movement
Palate cleanser between courses - a refreshing and provocative sorbet. Bellingen's own SULT Movement emerges from the smoky haze of a jazz basement cabaret to reset the senses with sultry, expressive and fully emancipated dance.
Black Jesus Experience
Third course - a rich, complex, slow-simmered dish whose recipe spans continents. This Melbourne-based ensemble plays an irresistibly danceable blend of traditional Ethiopian song, hip-hop, jazz and 21st-century funk. Steeped in the traditions of Ethio-jazz pioneered by the legendary Mulatu Astatke, widely regarded as the father of the genre and a collaborator on BJX's celebrated recordings. With Ethiopian-born singer Enushu Taye alongside Zimbabwean-Australian MC Mr Monk out front and a formidable horn section behind them, spicy Ethiopian pentatonic scales meet earthy funk in sweet communal groove.
SULT Movement
A second cabaret palate cleanser - smoky, languid, charged. SULT returns to prepare the body and the spirit for the final course.
Mastersonics vs Dance Makers Collective
The feast reaches its exuberant climax. Mastersonics bring together the Bellingen region's absolute top-shelf session players: jazz cats of the highest order who take well-known songs and cook them down into the most irresistibly funky, soulful, party-central renditions imaginable. This is the dessert trolley that makes you abandon all restraint.
But the feast doesn't stop there... Facilitators from Sydney's Dance Makers Collective, having already delivered three free workshops designed to liberate even the most timid of movers, now animate the dance floor, guiding the crowd into jiving, gliding, communal euphoria.
Bon appétit.