Ken Jones of Bright Eyes has sent an incredible list of gigs he attended at the Town Hall (and other venues) from 1964 to 1974

Presumably that’s not Bright Eyes as in Conor Oberst’s band. Or maybe it is.

In other Town Hall news, Classic FM have got an interview with Andrew Jowett, the Chief Executive of Town Hall Symphony Hall Birmingham.

Photo: Hotdogs by Matt Cattell

A few festive bits and bobs happening around Birmingham…

The Frankfurt Christmas Market closes on Friday 23 December, as does the Festive Pop Up Bazaar on New Street.

It’s the BrumNotes/This Is Tmrw Christmas Party at The Victoria tonight. Click the link or ogle the poster below (sidenote: are Lewes Herriot‘s gig posters the best around town at the moment? Answers on a postcard).

Birmingham Hippodrome have Cinderella on until the end of January and has already picked up some really good reviews from the Birmingham Mail and The Stage. I went along to the press night last night (disclosure: that means they gave me free tickets) and liked the lovely horsey best.

In other theatre-based offerings:

• The Rep have The Snowman at the ICC and Sleeping Beauty at the Crescent Theatre.
• Blue Orange Theatre in the Jewellery Quarter are doing A Christmas Carol
• The MAC have The Lost Happy Endings

In fact, Area Guide’s December issue has a Christmas theatre round-up from page 26 onwards. Ah, and Visit Birmingham have a Christmas round-up too.

Film-wise, Kino 10 are showing The Nightmare Before Christmas plus some short films at St Columba Church on Friday 23 Dec and The Electric have a smattering of festive films too.

Town Hall & Symphony Hall have a bundle of events going on:

• Polar (this afternoon)
• The CBSO’s Great Big Choral Christmas
• Christmas Eve Classics
• Boxing Day Gala

Meanwhile, down in that London, Birmingham Royal Ballet are seeing out the year performing The Nutcracker at the O2, which sounds like a pretty big deal to me.

There’s loads of other stuff too, obviously. If you’ve got any other good suggestions then bung them in the comments.

First up, the video, which was made by Vermillion Films:

And then the website, which was built by Made Media (which is where I work, full disclosure fans).

Also, blimey – I’ve just noticed that next year they’ve got a show called The Infernal Comedy:

John Malkovich stars in a stage play for baroque orchestra, singers and actor, based on the real-life story of convicted serial killer Jack Unterweger.

Yes, that John Malkovich. I’m a bit impressed by that.

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.

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

Yesterday morning I headed over to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, for a visit unlike any other. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Symphony of a Missing Room by Lundahl & Seitl, feeling slightly apprehensive as I was given a pair of wireless headphones, blindfolded and led cautiously around the museum by sounds, voices and a mysterious hand. The whole experience was what I can only describe as dream like, and had me leaving feeling like I’d been awoken from a deep, disorienting sleep.

So far it’s been receiving plenty of rave reviews on Twitter, who all seem to be able to put the experience into words so much better than I can. If you want to check it out for yourself, book via the Fierce website, it’s definitely one to give a go.

Last night also saw the launch of both Flatpack and Fierce, at VIVID, which has been transformed into The Dirty End. Along with live music from Juneau Projects, they had a few tasty treats and cocktails on offer which will apparently be sticking around for most of the festival.

The Vintage Mobile Cinema had it’s first Flatpack outing this afternoon in Victoria Square, where it gathered quite a few admirers. The 22 seater restored mobile cinema, originally toured British factories from 1967, promoting modern production methods. As one of only seven made, this gem is the last standing after being brought back to life to tour the country once again.

With it’s cosy little interior, complete with red cinema seats, it feels rather like a mini Electric. I was also treated to a clip of Buster Keaton’s silent film Sherlock Junior (1924), which is being screening tomorrow night at the Town Hall, accompanied by live organ and piano.

If you fancy hopping aboard, the vintage mobile cinema will be at Handsworth Library on Thursday, Birmingham Markets on Saturday, and Cannon Hill Park on Sunday. Take a look at whats on across the weekend over on the Flatpack site.

I’ll try and update this post with other Flatpack & Fierce adventures, but in the meantime let us know which events you’ve made it to and what should be on our ‘must see’ lists.

It’s festivals a gogo with the Fierce and Flatpack festivals kicking off today with a whole load of interesting stuff coming to Birmingham between now and Sunday.

You’ll no doubt have done the decent thing and booked up a load of tickets for both of these already but, if not, there should still be time. I’ve had a nosey through the programmes and reckon that I’ll be going to the following:

Tuesday:

• Fierce/Flatpack launch at VIVID
• The Irrepressibles at Town Hall

Wednesday:

• Shadow Shows at the Patrick Centre

Thursday:

• Shorts on Walls at VIVID
• Too Much Information at The Electric

Friday

• Nesst 2
• Queerfest to Fierce at VIVID
• Los Angeles Plays Itself at Ikon Eastside

Installations and ongoing things that I’ll try to catch when I can:

• Burningham
• The Commentators
• The Soldiers’ Song
• Prayer

All subject to having to work to do and so on. Plus I’m not around this weekend, which is a shame because there’s some ace stuff happening.

What are you going to be going to?

James Cook has joined this cohort with a post titled ‘Why the Birmingham comedy scene repeatedly dies on its hole…‘. His gripes are that (and I apologise for paraphrasing):

• research shows that residents of Birmingham are the most risk averse in the country. We have a drinking culture, but not much of a ‘going out’ culture. This makes things difficult for promoters
• there are too many poor quality comedy night charging people good money to see new, unpaid acts. These nights are rubbish and will put people off ever going to a comedy night again

I don’t claim to know too much about this – I go to the occasional stand-up show, but I don’t have James’s experience of the local comedy scene and he’s not the first to have made this complaint. However, from a lay punter’s point of view, I was under the impression that if comedy’s your thing then Birmingham caters for you pretty well. We’ve got:

• the NIA and LG Arena for the big, mainstream touring shows
• Town Hall and Alexandra Theatre for other biggish touring shows
• two main stand-up venues – The Glee Club and Highlight
• other occasional shows at The Public and the MAC. Warwick Arts Centre and various places in Wolverhampton are fairly close too
• some smaller, regular nights bringing in some decent national names (Comedy Junction and Popcorn Comedy)
• there’s a proliferation of other, smaller nights at pubs and bars around over the city too

In terms of general promotion, we’ve got a dedicated comedy website and (almost?) every year the Birmingham Comedy Festival draws a ring around a load of shows happening over the space of a month and shouts about them.

That seems like a pretty healthy spread to me. Certainly a good deal more than many other towns and cities can claim. Does it constitute a ‘scene’? If not, is it just the audiences for the smaller gigs that are missing, or something else?

I’d be interested in hearing what people think. Or, seeing as how he started the discussion, leave a comment on James’s post.

• Invisible City‘s final event, Media Circus, takes place on 29 Oct at Fazeley Studios. With entertainment, music, drinks, performances and digital displays, along with the winners of the Invisible City categories to be announced. Fancy dress is along the lines of Victorian Circus.
• CBSO’s Friday Night Classics: Nightmare on Broad Street takes place on 29 Oct, 7.30pm at Symphony Hall, with a pre-concert talk at 6.15.
• Town Hall host a Halloween Silent Movie Special with the 1923 classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame on 31 Oct at 7.30pm.
• Black Country Living Museum are holding Halloween at the Museum on 30 & 31 Oct from 6.30pm – 10pm, with opportunities for psychic reading and trick or treating along the cobbled streets.
• Take a guided tour of Aston Hall, exploring the ghosts and legends on 31 Oct at 7.30pm. Full of spooky surprises, this is not suitable for children of a ‘nervous disposition’.
• Halloween Night at the Museum Collections Centre invites you on a spine tingling trail for a chance to see some of the scariest objects not on general display, join the tour on 29 Oct from 6.30pm – 9pm.

Since Halloween falls on a weekend, it would be a crime to let an opportunity to get dressed up go unmentioned. Most weekend club nights will be welcoming heavy eyeliner and fake blood, on the only occasion where you can get away with wearing a bin liner, here’s a few that stand out;

• Jocko Homo will be hosting The Victoria’s Halloween festivities from 9pm with free entry.
• Face present their Halloween Bash at Cellar Door, the Rainbow, with house legend Emerson Todd.
• Hare & Hounds are holding House of God Halloween Party with horror makeup available on the night.
• Eddie’s Rock Club will be dishing out a free shot for the first 100 people through the door, and a £50 prize to the best dressed.
• The fourth Electric City event at HMV Institute is Spectrum’s Halloween Fancy Dress Special, with Sub Focus and Stanton Warriors live.
• The Curates Egg presents a Halloween special at The Old Wharf on 31 Oct, with live music from Nightingales, The Courtesy Group and Black Carrot.

Plus outfit inspiration is provided by this month’s issue of Area for how to pull off a creepy-but-cool costume, with just the right amount of effort to keep your street cred.