I didn’t make it to CoCoMAD but I did get down to the Friday of Mostly Jazz. It was lovely – nice atmosphere if you can handle a concentrated dose of Moseleyness, some good music and an utterly charming setting. There’s a much better review by The Baron over on The Hearing Aid.

There are a few photos on Flickr but most of them are from Fiona Cullinan, who I saw running about with her camera, so here’s a slideshow from her Mostly Jazz set:

In other jazz news, the Birmingham International Jazz Festival is on until Sunday with all sorts of things happening all over the place.

You can see the programme here but otherwise don’t be surprised to stumble across something if you’re out and about this weekend.

Also, not strictly affiliated with the festival but not a million miles away (the Birmingham Jazz Youth Group are on the bill), this event from Celebrating Sanctuary following on from June’s Refugee Week has been brought to my attention:

It’s on Sunday 6 July from 5pm til late at the Yardbird.  Entry is free.

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.