The Sydney Hospitality Barons behind Mary’s will be launching a new live music venue in the entertainment district this year, with the aim of bringing fresh energy to the East Sydney venue and expanding the the city’s music supply as it recovers from the pandemic.
The venue dedicated to live music Liberty Hall, located in front of the Hordern Pavilion, will open its doors to international and national tours and an audience of 1,200 people from the end of October. A new Mary’s burger restaurant will also open next door.
Ready to expand: Kenny Graham and Jake Smyth are ready to move into the Moore Park entertainment district. Credit: Edwina Pickles
The site has been home to music companies The Forum, Hi-Fi and Max Watt’s for the past 10 years, but their lease was pending renewal when Mary’s founders Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham began conversations with Entertainment Quarter executive co-director Michael Hodgson.
“There was a burger restaurant next door and so it seemed natural to us,” Graham said.
The couple wants Liberty Hall to be a “free and creative” space that attracts rock and roll, hip-hop and electronic artists, among others, both from home and abroad.
“But we won’t be snobbish about what we think is great. We just want a stage and space for people to use it and show off their art,” Graham said.
“We look for the room to be a little more chameleon-like … It’s a black box, but using the lighting and the mobile device, putting stages in the middle of the room, we can transform the space.”
The new business is an extension for Mary’s, which this year evicted the Lansdowne Hotel’s smaller music venue amid the building owner’s plans to turn the upstairs space into accommodation.
Graham and Smyth had been working with Lansdowne since 2017 to promote live music, building a 300-capacity room upstairs that quickly earned its reputation as an iconic space for emerging Australian artists to perform. be the most important teeth or names to act. an intimate environment.