The film was commissioned by THSH, with the support of the DMC McDonald Foundation, and was created by animator Chris Randall at Second Home Studios to a poem by Symphony Hall’s poet-in-residence Julie Boden.

The Mechanical Musical Marvel is currently being shown on Birmingham’s BBC Big Screen in Victoria Square, and has already been selected for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival which runs 21 – 30 October.

For starters, I haven’t got a flyer for this one but Lizzy Parks is playing in the Symphony Hall foyers today (Friday) from 5.30pm to 7pm and it’s free. Info on the THSH website. Or indeed the Birmingham Jazz website.

Earlier in the day (in fact from 12pm to 7pm) head over to Lombard Street in Digbeth for PST’s street party. This here flyer says there’s going to be food, live art and heavy bass. And face painting.

MakeIt Zone are having an open day on Saturday.

Capsule have got an event at Kings Heath’s Hare and Hounds on Saturday night called Wedlock. Dunno what that’s a reference to but I like the pretty picture.

There’s loads of other stuff happening too. Have a look at Live Brum for listings.

I arrived in Birmingham in the summer of 2006, tasked with preparing Town Hall for its anticipated re-opening, due to happen 18 months later at the end of 2007. Although I had lived in the Midlands during my school years, I didn’t really know Birmingham, and so had no idea how it would feel to live and work in the City, despite the reassurances from a few friendly faces I knew prior to my arrival.

Since then, I have worked closely with my colleague Paul Keene (Director of Programming for THSH) to build new relationships with artists, producers, promoters, other arts organisations, and civic and community groups.  The most refreshing aspect of working in Birmingham has been experiencing just how easy it is to meet people and “do business”.  Despite the huge amount of creative work taking place here, I quickly found that everyone knows everyone, and really there’s no excuse not to be working together and sharing ideas.

Our approach has always been to get out of Town Hall and to try and see as many other things as possible, both to support the work of others, but also to get a real understanding of how THSH fits into the creative network of the City.  When your day job is overseeing a hall which presents 300 different events a year, it’s important to remember to get off the daily hamster wheel and make the time to meet with colleagues from other arts organisations, as that tends to be how the interesting new ideas and projects begin to take shape.

This week, Town Hall have hosted Fierce and Flatpack in two exciting events (The Irrepressibles, and Digging For Gold), and we are very proud to be involved as partners in both festivals. The Irrepressibles show came about because Laura from Fierce and I were both at a previous Irrepressibles show in St Martin’s Church as part of last year’s SHOUT Queer Festival, and we were both blown away by what we heard. A couple of quick discussions later, and a chat with Jamie from the Irrepressibles, and we had agreed to jointly work together to bring the group back to Birmingham for Fierce. With Flatpack, we have always kept in touch with Ian and Pip, and following their big Curzonora project two years ago, we were keen to work with them to bring another Flatpack project to Town Hall. By taking our successful existing silent film with organ accompaniment format, and adapting it to include improvised piano and some shorter films, we have been able to add to Flatpack’s focus this year on archivist Iris Barry.

We are also preparing for our major Rite of Spring 3D project, taking place on April 21st, and performed by the CBSO with dancer Julia Mach and artistic director Klaus Obermaier. We have made the financial commitment to ensure that this extraordinary project is presented in Birmingham, but as always, we want to work with our partners to ensure that all the potential audiences get to hear about it, and we don’t serve Birmingham audiences best by just doing that by ourselves.

That approach to the marketing strategy for the Rite of Spring project runs through all of our work at THSH – we will always work with partners wherever we can, whether it is us guaranteeing the fees and costs for a project, or through more straightforward marketing and cross-promotional relationships.  For example, if we are promoting The Dhol Foundation in concert at Town Hall, we will work with The Drum, sampad, Punch, Birmingham Music Service and independent promoters to ensure that we utilise as many avenues as possible to spread the word on the show, and to help develop an audience for the artists. We are also talking to the Birmingham Jazz team on a weekly basis, sharing ideas for future projects, and working together to promote performances such as the recent Uri Caine/Mahler concert, as part of the Birmingham Mahler Cycle.

On a national basis, we’re working with promoters and festivals including Serious, who collaborate with us to ensure that artists including Mariza, Staff Benda Bilili and Salif Keita are performing in Birmingham as part of their limited UK tour plans. Serious and other promoters who represent touring artists are keen to include Birmingham, but this will only happen if an organisation like THSH is prepared to invest and commit to the artists, as these concerts rarely stand up on a purely commercial arrangement.

So, back to my original question – is Birmingham a city where it is easy to collaborate with others?  Five years on, we can look back over a very broad range of collaborations, some of which were for one-off occasions, and some which have since evolved into an ongoing relationship. I believe that collaboration is definitely one of the things that Birmingham does best, and we should be proud of what we can achieve by working together.

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By Simon Wales, Town Hall Birmingham

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

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