source : the age
For three decades, Meredith Brooks lived a life defined by veterinary medicine: training, internships, residencies and, ultimately, the daily responsibilities of running her own practice in Wilston.
Beneath a career of desexing, microchipping, parasites and vaccinations was a lifelong love of music.
The turning point arrived when the pressure of running her clinic began to take its toll.
“I was really quite stressed and burnt out,” Brooks says. “I didn’t just want to do the one thing my whole life and then die. And that’s when I decided that I’d really like to have a different chapter to my life.”
Brooks’ father was a jazz musician, and she had begun piano lessons at the age of five. Over the years she tried her hand at double bass, saxophone, clarinet, and guitar, but it remained a hobby.
It was 2020, when Brooks was 50 and her children had finished school, when she took the leap and sold the Wilston practice and enrolled in a Bachelor of Music at the Jazz Music Institute (JMI) in Brisbane.
Despite her initial anxiety, Brooks quickly found her footing and realised that age was no barrier to reinvention.
“I thought, Oh, am I too old? But then you read all those stories of people who have, you know, even started their careers at 50,” she says.
“If someone’s thinking, should I change my career … I would say, yeah, go for it. If you’ve got a dream, go for it.”
Brooks graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Piano Performance, receiving the Brad Rogers Memorial Academic Award for the highest GPA in her class.
During her sophomore year at JMI, Brooks identified a lack of dedicated live jazz venues in Brisbane.
“Going into second year is when I probably started thinking, I’d really like to open a jazz club.”
Bringing this vision to life alongside her husband Andrew proved to be a four-year journey – funded by the sale of her veterinary clinic.
The pair navigated property searches, architectural designs, council approvals and construction work. Along the way, they also had to overcome the skeptics.
“I did have a number of people who advised me strongly against it and said things like, ‘you’re going to lose all your money. ’ I had a lot of negative feedback, but a lot of positive as well.”
Tucked down Mead Lane, off Wickham Street in Fortitude Valley behind a striking ruby red door, The Ruby Jazz Club officially opened as Brisbane’s only privately owned speakeasy jazz club.
Inside, Brooks has structured the weekly programming to showcase both seasoned professionals and young local musicians entering the industry.
“On a Friday night, I like to give the opportunity to well-established bands to come and put on a show,” Brooks explains. “On Saturday nights, I like to give the opportunity to students and recently graduated musicians.”
Beyond backing local artists, Brooks is determined to dismantle the stereotype that jazz is strictly an older person’s genre.
“My dream was to be inclusive of all demographics and ages,” she says. “A lot of jazz clubs focus on older people because in general, jazz appeals to an older age group, not your young ones. So everyone’s got their own ideas, but I just would like to challenge them to come along and have a listen and then see what they think.
“I’ve had people say, ‘Oh, wow. I just love this. Like, I don’t listen to jazz, but this is so cool. I didn’t know this was what jazz was.’”
The club has a 1920s Prohibition-era aesthetic with table seating. There’s a premium selection of bourbons, and cocktails served in vintage teacups, as well as beer and wine; food runs to share plates, with cheese platters, dumplings, sliders and tacos.
Bebop, swing, modern jazz and fusion jazz are musical staples, and there are frequent tributes to the great chanteuses such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Most tickets are $30 full price, and many shows are free entry.
With the 80-capacity room packing out each weekend, the risk has given way to a sense of accomplishment.
“The fact that we have had a full house every night is a big relief, a very big relief,” Brooks says. “I think my husband and I are proud of what we’ve achieved.
“Once it’s been going for a while, we can just sort of sit back and think, oh, wow, yeah, we created this, isn’t it great?”
And while she delights in cultivating local talent, Brooks holds one ultimate dream headliner in mind: “If I could have, I’d really like to have Harry Connick Jr.”
Ruby Jazz Club is open Friday and Saturday nights behind the Ruby Red door in Mead Lane, Fortitude Valley.
Meredith Brooks features in the Season 13 premiere of My Way, airing Sunday, October 18 at 5.30pm on Channel 9 and 9Now.
Charlotte Shallcross is a media professional specialising in factual, destination and lifestyle television, and currently the executive producer of Queensland content at Nine.
