I’m very much liking the website for the 24th Birmingham International Jazz Festival. I’ll come back to that though. Meanwhile…
The dates/programme/etc for the jazz festival have been released. It’ll take place across a whole host of venues from 4 – 13 July.
Musicians and bands from USA, Spain, France, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Czech Republic and Venezuela line up alongside the best from the UK and from the region to present a feast of some 180 concerts in ten days, almost every one free to the public.
Having browsed through the programme there are no acts there that jumped out at me. Now, I’m not the most studious jazzhead in the world so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed someone big so please let me know any top picks in the comments.
Back to the website though, and it’s a joy. It’s nice and clearly laid out, the listings are easy to navigate and it works. So they’ve got the basics right. Beyond that though, what I like that they’ve got a blog (which they’re using) and that they’ve listed the events on Upcoming (so you can slot the ones you want into your (non-physical) calendar easily. They’ve done the same with Last.fm too, which is good to see – I use the event listings there to track which gigs I’ve been to and get recommendations for others.
Also, they’ve got a Flickr account and are accepting reviews on the site itself which you can send via the contact form, by email or by Twitter. Oy yeah, they’re on Twitter too. This is all good, useful stuff and the best local example of this kind of thing that I’ve seen. Hopefully their audience will engage with all of this.
Just to balance out the praise, most of the gigs are free but for the paying ones links to the ticket sellers would be good. Actually, an artists section and links to the artists’ websites would be useful – especially for someone like me who’s interested but clueless as to who these people are.
No Biscuit Boys and no Big Man Clayton (Mr C)?.
Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Robin 2, Bilston. Bilston?
Okay, I see there are gigs in Bromsgrove, Dudley and Solihull too.
But where are the homegrown names?
my observation of the event was that it always used to be primarily the aural offence that is ‘trad’; looking at the programme it still seems heavily weighted in that direction.
nice to see my old trumpet teacher digby fairweather playing though !
You want home-grown names in the jazz fest? Try Richard Hughes, Mike Green, Steve Street, the Mike Burney Quartet, Paul Sawtell, Nick Millward, John Patrick, Brian Mellor, Keith Bill, Arthur Brown Band, the Bryan Corbett Quartet, Mick Hatton’s MJHQ, Roy Forbes, the David Moore Blues Band, the Adam Phillips Trio, Fat Lip Blues Band, Kel Elliott, Lexie Stobie, Sam Payne, they are all set to play their part.
I haven’t yet checked with the Jazz Gestapo, but I would also include Val Wiseman, Steve Steinhaus, Boysie Battrum, Bobby Woods and Tom Hill – some born here and moved away, others vice versa. That’s as well as the co-operation with several local jazz organisations which include a bunch more local players – and there’s an exhibition of the paintings of local musician and bandleader King Pleasure.
Worth checking out are the Cobweb Collective;s Jam Session at the Yardbird on Wednesday 9 July and the Walsall Jazz Orchestra at the Symphony Hall bar on Thursday 10 July. Cobweb is a bunch of Birmingham Conservatoire students and graduates – some very talented players and a really fresh take on jazz with a particularly Birmingham spin. Also, the fab film about Chet Baker, Let’s Get Lost, is showing at the Electric.
Definitely worth a look.