Toff Tuesdays has quietly become one of Melbourne's most electric free nights, tucked inside the second floor of Curtin House.
The weekly residency at The Toff in Town turns the Swanston Street venue into a late-night jazz hub, with a rotating cast of the city’s sharpest young musicians taking to the stage side from 11.30pm. The lineup draws from Melbourne’s music institutions, featuring players connected to Monash, VCA, Box Hill and RMIT alongside touring artists passing through town.
Vocalists, rappers, dancers, visual artists and producers are all invited to jump in and shape each performance, making every session a one-off.
Toff Tuesdays
- Every week, The Toff in Town, Curtin House, 252 Swanston Street, Melbourne
- Doors from 6pm, free entry
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The house band brings together Jesse Chin Quan on bass, Julian Steel on drums and Anthony Farrugia on guitar as the rhythm section, with Lewis Hosie and Martin Pang building out keys and synth textures. Felix Meredith handles trumpet, Sakiko Goto covers alto sax and Lachie Daff rounds out the horns on tenor sax. Regular vocalists Tyla Moonchild and Shantael Raphael anchor the vocal side, though the stage remains open to anyone willing to step up.
The evening opens at 6pm on the carriage side with happy hour running until 8pm, where $15 cocktails and $9 pints set the tone. Melbourne selector DJ Colette takes over from 9pm, warming the room before the live sets begin. The jazz fires up at 11.30pm across two sets on the stage side, before DJs and dancing carry things through to close.
The open format is central to what makes the residency tick. Rather than a fixed setlist, each performance leans heavily on improvisation, with the house band locking into grooves that shift between deep late-night jazz and high-energy club territory. The rotating roster means no two sessions sound alike, and the invitation for outside performers to sit in keeps the lineup unpredictable.
Free entry removes the barrier that keeps a lot of weekly residencies under the radar. For anyone looking to discover new players or catch familiar faces in an unscripted setting, the Toff has carved out a weekly slot that rewards showing up with no expectations.
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