Howard Assembly Room: Leeds DJ Tony Green on his plans as Opera North venue's new manager

A trip to the Howard Assembly Room (HAR) in Leeds is usually one to remember. Leaving aside its reputation for top quality bookings, the room itself is something to behold, with its beautiful wooden features and lovely acoustics.

It is a venue which seems to reflect the eclectic talents who take to its stage. Now a new era is upon the HAR after Tony Green has been appointed its general manager and programmer – and he is especially keen to remove barriers for other promoters and event organisers to use the space.

Tony, 51, grew up in Blackpool and, inspired by culture such as the DMC World DJ Championships, was part of a group of “hip-hop kids”. “That led us into jazz, led us into funk, led us into soul, finding all the samples. And DJing – we just wanted to emulate these world champions, so that was the start,” he says.

“Blackpool’s good for parties but not great for music culture so as soon as I got to Leeds, to university, I was away, just DJing in the clubs, DJing in the bars. I started putting my own events on, eventually started running the Faversham in the late 90s and never looked back from there really.”

He had moved to West Yorkshire in 1992 to study information systems and management studies (“I just wanted to be in Leeds”) and later co-founded Fresh Jive, a hip-hop culture event that began in 1998 and still runs on and off more than 25 years later.

In 2015, Tony went on to create a record label dedicated to championing musical talent in the city – Released Records – and after previously running a shop from the Corn Exchange is now set up at Outlaws Yacht Club in New York Street.

Tony was also operations director at Dowsing & Reynolds, a design-led ecommerce brand, and left in 2023 after 10 years.

His cultural and business nous is now being used at HAR, and while he wants to retain its reputation for quality and niche acts, he believes that there is room to broaden its appeal so that more people can enjoy the venue. It comes at an opportune moment as Kino, the HAR’s restaurant which closed in December last year, has reopened to serve drinks.

The HAR is run by Opera North, which is a charity, and past guests have included esteemed artists such as Tony Allen, PJ Harvey, Nils Frahm and Buena Vista Social Club.

Eclecticism is still the byword but outside promoters are now being given an even warmer welcome, with the diary opened up to them. Although the opportunity is there for all kinds of promoters, Tony gives particular mention to the city’s “big three”.

“We work closely with Nathan (Clark, who runs the Brudenell Social Club), Futuresound and Super Friendz. They've got a real grasp on all the popular music that's coming into the city and as long as they want to use us as a venue, we'll be able to deliver popular music. So yes, we will certainly not refuse any of those big hitters wanting to use the place and bring a show, whether it's folk, jazz, hip-hop, soul, rock, indie. If they believe this is the venue that will work for this act, come in and use it. And I think that's something that's changed. Just speaking to them, they have used it before, but they've had to co-promote with the venue, so now I've just opened it up to them and said: ‘This is a venue for you to use’. And the shows are coming through now.”

That is shows like Jens Lekman, Ron Sexsmith and Submotion Orchestra. Most of the upcoming acts already announced, however, pre-exist Tony’s short time in the job.

Also, he suggests there might already be more on at the HAR than people realise.

Tony says: “One of the things that I worked out quickly when I arrived is there's nothing advertised on the stairs for anything else, so if you walk into a venue and you're seeing jazz, you just assume that's all they do because there's nothing telling you, well, actually, next week is an electronic act and then we've got an old rocker on, and then the following week there's a reggae artist. There's nothing telling you this, so you just assume it's for you, and I think everyone's made their assumptions that it's classical or that it's jazz or that it's folk. Everyone's had their own take on what the place does and I think that's something we're just really broadening now.”

Meanwhile, when announcing his appointment Opera North said that the organisation is “excited to embrace new ideas and more commercial thinking to bolster financial resilience and create a sustainable long-term future for the venue”.

Had the venue been struggling?

Tony says: “No, I wouldn’t say it's been struggling but that (commercial thinking) wasn't its agenda. It just came in on ‘Arts! Do amazing things!’ That was the brief.”

Corporate events, for example, might provide an extra source of income.

And will we be seeing hip-hop and breakdancers at the HAR?

“I’ll definitely be bringing that sort of culture through,” he says. “There's a side of electronic music that Leeds isn't covering too well, so I'll be bringing that through as well.”

But he adds: “We have to deliver something different for the city or we're just pulling out of the same pond. I don't ever want to do that with anything. I never did that with the promotions. I never set up anything that was already there. I always operated in my own lane. The venue's always operated in its own lane, I don't need to worry about that, but anything I'm introducing – in terms of us booking ourselves – it won't be clawing off other scenes.”

For the latest events, visit: ww.operanorth.co.uk/howard-assembly-room