Venue 505 announces the closure of Sydney’s Surry Hills music scene

For the past ten years Venue 505 at 280 Cleveland Street Surry Hills has presented six nights a week of the best local, interstate and international live music acts, it has become a legendary club garnering international acclaim and a swag of awards including Down Beat Magazines Top 100 Jazz Clubs 2020-2011 and Time Out Sydney Legends Award, and has been listed in the Lonely Planet guide to Sydney as a must visit spot.

The success of venue 505 has been testament to the passion, tenacity and commitment of the venues owners bassist Cameron Undy and Arts Administrator Kerri Glasscock. Over the past ten years, at the Cleveland Street location, they have presented close to 3000 gigs to hundreds of thousands of audiences, but it is time for new adventures. Cameron Undy says

“A decade of jazz and cocktails comes to an end, we have had so many great nights of music at this venue and we have loved being able to provide a home to local musicians, but all things have their time and we are super excited about the future. We’ll be creating a brand-new program of live music at our Newtown Theatre called Acoustic Ritual, providing Sydney with its only intimate concert style room, I can’t wait to be able to offer a really unique playing environment for all the musicians we love and give Sydney audiences a super intimate, special place to hear music.”

Cameron and Kerri want to ensure that the narrative around this closure is not one of negativity or a doom and gloom perspective about Sydney losing another music venue. A vocal advocate for the night time economy and independent sector Kerri says:

“The closure of Venue 505 is absolutely a personal choice for Cameron and me, it is simply time for us to consolidate. It is by no means because business is bad, or Sydney has died. We want to be very clear about that. Having only one venue to run and not two we are hoping for a bit more down time and balance. More excitedly though, we are really looking forward to returning to 505’s roots with the Acoustic Ritual program, that will essentially see us move back to the vibe of 505’s early warehouse days, but in a beautiful Edwardian ballroom in the heart of Newtown.”

The final performance at Venue 505 will take place Tuesday 17^th December from 6pm, with the Old School Funk and Groove Band.