Will Sparks brings his bounce to The Church on Dec. 11

The Melbourne DJ credited with pioneering Melbourne bounce just announced a Friday-night date at The Church, Denver's nightclub in a 19th-century parish church. Tickets are $19.95.

There's a particular kind of Friday night in Denver that ends under stained glass with a kick drum shaking the pews out of memory. On Friday, Dec. 11, that night belongs to Will Sparks at The Church.

The show was announced Oct. 30. Music starts at 10 p.m., tickets are $19.95 through TicketWeb, and the room holds 1,500. For a DJ with this résumé, that is a very reasonable price for a club night two weeks before the holidays.

If the name rings a bell from a decade ago, there's a reason. According to Wikipedia, William James Sparks is a Melbourne DJ and producer widely credited with pioneering Melbourne bounce, the bouncy, stripped-back festival sound that swept dance floors in the early 2010s. His best-known record is the 2013 single "Bring It Back" with Joel Fletcher. In 2014 he toured North America with Timmy Trumpet and Fletcher on the Bounce Bus Tour.

The recognition piled up early. He started his career in 2012, inthemix named him Best Breakthrough Artist in 2013, and he was named Australia's No. 1 DJ the following year. He has appeared in DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs poll repeatedly, and ARIA has spotlighted him as its DJ of the week.

He hasn't stood still, either. Later tracks such as "Nevermind" and "Kids These Days" in 2020 pushed toward darker techno sounds, and he runs CLUBWRK, a sub-label under Teamwrk Records. The bounce never fully went away, though. This year he took a classics tour through Australia, including a Sydney show that leaned on the records that made him. So whether you knew him from the bounce era or found him later, expect both sides of his catalog.

Expect both sides of his catalog.

Then there's the building, which is half the reason to go. The Church occupies the former St. Mark's Parish Church at 1160 Lincoln Street. As Clio tells it, it's a Gothic Revival building designed by architect William Lang in 1889. Its original tower fell in the 1950s, and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. In 1994, Regas Christou bought it from the Colorado Episcopal Diocese for $275,000, and it has run as a nightclub since 1996. Today it's part of the CoClubs family and books EDM, house and techno.

Few rooms in town carry that much history into a dance night. Lights through old arches, a crowd packed into what used to be a sanctuary: it's a good match for a DJ whose sound was built for big, communal moments.

What to know: this is a late Friday start, so plan to get there after 10, eat beforehand, and sort out your ride home before you go. At $19.95, it's the kind of ticket you don't need to think about long.

Some Denver nights are about discovery. This one is closer to a reunion with a sound a lot of us first heard in our early twenties, in a building that has been gathering crowds for well over a century. See you under the arches on Dec. 11.

Sources: JamBase: Will Sparks at The Church (jambase.com); Wikipedia: Will Sparks (en.wikipedia.org); ARIA: DJ of the Week Will Sparks (aria.com.au); Will Sparks official site (willsparks.com.au); eGlobal Travel Media: Will Sparks ignites classics tour at Selinas (eglobaltravelmedia.com.au); Clio: St. Mark's Parish Church; The Church Nightclub (theclio.com); Wikipedia: The Church Nightclub (en.wikipedia.org); CoClubs: The history of The Church Nightclub (coclubs.com); BusinessDen: Christou nabs Five Points church (businessden.com)