On the filmic side, The Electric are showing Ghostbusters and at the MAC you can see Nosferatu with a live score by the Midlands Fretted Orchestra.

Jumping the gun by a good eight days (if they turned up at my door that early I’d tell them to do one) are KINO 10 with a Halloween Special promising short films with a ghoulish twist.

Also brought to my attention:

• FIRST FRIGHT: a half-term Halloween horror workshop at MAC from First Light
• There’s a screening of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with live organ accompaniment at the Town Hall
• Outer Sight Hallowe’en Super Shock Show at The Edge on Sat 29 Oct

Have I missed anything good?

We are lucky to live in city so diverse that there is music and art of all types so readily available to us. In the music scene, some artists aren’t just available, they are begging for audiences to experience their music. I have sourced some excellent music that is being performed in Birmingham in the next month, alone. This is just a tiny snapshot into the world of music and performance that is not achieving quite the audience members that it rightly deserves.

With the news of the cuts happening in the next few years in Birmingham, it is now that we should be celebrating what we, as artists, have to offer. The best way, I feel, to do this, is to see everything. Go to concerts and experience what has been provided to us, show the people in charge of money in this city what, we, as music fans need.

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – contemporary, classical, dance, technology

One of the the CBSO’s (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) biggest projects of the 2010/2011 is it’s performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. A formidable and excellent piece in it’s own right, the creators at the CBSO and Symphony Hall have fused together music, dance and technology :

Experience an astonishing interplay between reality and fantasy as dancer Julia Mach’s extraordinary live performance interacts, through the magic of digital wizardry, with real-time, computer generated stereoscopic projections, translated into a virtual reality space with the aid of 3D spectacles for the audience.

– THSH

The 30-minutes piece is preceded by Varese’s Tuning Up and Ligeti’s Lontano for large orchestra, a distant and warm piece which plays with with the make-up of unconventional diatonic harmony.

For more info and for the special Rite of Spring micro-site, please visit http://riteofspring3d.thsh.co.uk

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group – contemporary, classical

The BCMG is the city’s orchestra dedicated entirely to the performance of contemporary and new music. Made up of players from the CBSO, the flexible organisation has grown in the one of the world’s most fore-thinking ensembles of new music. They play regular concerts at the CBSO Centre on Berkley Street, B1, as well as touring all over the city.

The percussion players are performing what promises to be an excellent concert of Varese and Xenakis on the 25th March at Yardley Old Church as well as this Sunday (13th March).

Oliver Knussen conducts his own memorial work Requiem – Songs for Sue as well as pieces by Morton Feldman and Harrison Birtwistle

Steve Reich and Thomas Ades. – contemporary, classical

This week, Friday 11th March, Symphony Hall have also included another excellent performance of contemporary. The London Sinfonietta, one of the world’s leading orchestra for contemporary classical music are visiting Birmingham, performing Steve
Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, complete with 4 grand pianos and 5 marimbas. The minimalist style of Steve Reich is used in many sources of media, films, adverts and television, purely for the fact it is accessible to both musician and audience alike. Conductor Thomas Ades? starts the concert with his own In Seven Days, a collaborative project with filmmaker Tal Rosner and is based on the Creation.

Tickets start from £10 (or £5 on the day for U25s)

The Irrepressibles: Mirror Mirror – contemporary pop, performance art, collaboration, crossover

Another gig at the heart of Birmingham, the Town Hall, The Irrepressibles are a 10-piece orchestra committed to stretching the boundaries of conventional performance. Lead by singer, Jamie McDermot, they perform hearty indie music with a set up of orchestral musicians as accompaniment.

This show is in conjunction with Fierce Festival and is at Town Hall, 22nd March, £15

SOUNDkitchen – contemporary, sound, experimental, collaboration

SOUNDkitchen is a new group made up of music graduates from the University of Birmingham. Their “STONEsoup” concert at the MAC was met with rave reviews and are following up with a collaborative event with Balkanic Eruption, promoters of Klezmer and Balkan music within the city. Playing at the Hare and Hounds, B14, the concert focuses on expanding sound using technology and live instruments, it will be followed by a live laptop performance from Garfield Benjamin.

Birmingham Conservatoire – classical contemporary, premieres, fusion

Like the Uni of Birmingham, the Conservatoire has one of the most developed composition departments in the country. The students are exceptionally talented and lucky for us the concerts are generally very cheap and on a regular basis. This month as well as a student showcase of new music (held on the 18th March and conducted by the great Edwin Roxburgh) we see the Frontiers department of Conservatoire play host to world-renowned electronic violinist, Barbara Luneberg. This young talent has worked with some of the world’s best contemporary composers. On the 14th March, Luneberg is to perform works written for her by young composers from all over Europe, this will also include a premiere of work by VT of the Conservatoire, Ed Bennett.

For more info on any of the above please visit
www.thsh.co.uk
www.bcmg.org.uk
www.soundkitchenuk.org
www.theirrepressibles.com
www.bcu.ac.uk/pme/conservatoire/events-calendar

—————

Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research are hosting ‘Jazz and the Media‘, in partnership with Birmingham Conservatoire and Birmingham Jazz on 15 October. The event welcomes three internationally recognised speakers who will be presenting seminars throughout the day.

Mike Connolly is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with over 10 years experience in factual and arts television production.

William Ellis is at the vanguard of music photographers and is widely recognised as having created an important document of the contemporary jazz scene in Africa, Europe and The Americas.

Alyn Shipton is an award-winning author and broadcaster, who is jazz critic for The Times in London, and a presenter/producer of jazz programmes for BBC Radio.

To read more about these guys and their extensive careers working around jazz and the media, visit the event page.

Tickets can be ordered online at jazzandthemedia.eventbrite.com.

Birmingham Book Festival are having an extra one-day festival on 29 May this year. The line-up of events (shamelessly nicked from their website) looks like this:

• National Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy returns to Birmingham for another much-anticipated reading.
• Novelist Helen Dunmore talks about her new novel Betrayal.
• Novelists Amanda Smyth (Black Rock), Aifric Campbell (The Semantics Of Murder, The Loss Adjustor) and Samantha Harvey (The Wilderness) talk about their writing experiences.
• Writer, Presenter and Broadcaster Stuart Maconie talks about his Adventures on the High Teas and that elusive ‘middle England’.
• Poet Jo Bell and Novelist Jenn Ashworth come together in Too Much Information, ‘wise wicked and witty words from two lively writers’.

It’ll be held at Birmingham Conservatoire, there’s more detail here and tickets are on sale.