If you are going to try a few gigs in Birmingham this month, these are the ones I’d choose from: Wednesday 8 In Love With TDE Promotions/Fizzle, mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham, 8pm, £10 French drummer Sylvain Darrifourcq has string-playing brothers to share… Read More ›
Words and Pictures by John Watson University College Birmingham McIntyre House, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham UK 22-05-2016 The 2016 JQ Jazz Legends Festival wrapped up with some sublimely lovely singing… followed by an astonishing musical thunderstorm. The storm came from the… Read More ›
Words and pictures by John Watson The Red Lion, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham UK 21-05-2016 It’s often the case that one ambitious project in the arts world can spark valuable spin-offs. Two of the bands featured in the JQ Jazz Legends… Read More ›
The Legends are being celebrated earlier this year. After their highly successful first Legends Festival in July last year, Birmingham Jazz is raising a glass to the great jazz players of the past a little earlier in the calendar year…. Read More ›
Various venues, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham UK 19-07-2015 The day began bright and early again with the second Jazz Breakfast session at the Bloc Hotel. Clearly jazz fans start later on a Sunday but the sparse audience did nothing to affect… Read More ›
Various venues, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham UK 18-07-2015 Jazz might be a traditionally late night music but the Legends Festival is trying – bravely, to be sure – it take it into a fresh time of day: 10.30am. This was the… Read More ›
Tomorrow evening saxophonist Tony Kofi brings his powerful sound to The Chapel, the intimate room used every other Wednesday by Stratford Jazz at No 1 Shakespeare Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, and he has the BoHop Trio for company. Tony Kofi was born… Read More ›
It’s hard to believe, but one of British jazz’s most innovative and distinctive bands is ten years old. Polar Bear, led by drummer Sebastian Rochford, has toured extensively over this decade and released its fifth recording at the beginning of… Read More ›
Birmingham Jazz, the organisation that programmes jazz in the upstairs room of The Red Lion in Warstone Lane, Jewellery Quarter, opened their 2014 programme with a club night from Lydia Glanville earlier this month and last Friday with Josh Kemp’s… Read More ›
CBSO Centre, Birmingham UK 09-11-2013 Two Charles Mingus albums, The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, are 50 years old, and double bassist Arnie Somogyi has put a tour together for his band Scenes In… Read More ›
Red Lion, Warstone Lane, Birmingham UK 11-01-2013 Saxophonist Tony Kofi, who might be more familiar behind an alto saxophone, held his vintage tenor aloft and explained that he had been given it when in New York for a recording session… Read More ›
The new jazz year is in full swing this week with lots of Birmingham-based bands doing their thing around town. But first, a Nottingham-born, Berklee-trained saxophonist who has built a fine reputation around the world not only for his original… Read More ›
Back in the relatively sunny spring (can you remember back that far, to a time when a bright yellow orb hung in the sky for more than a few minutes at a time?), there was that messy divorce between Birmingham… Read More ›
Garry writes: “Here is an unusually wide-angled shot from last night’s Birmingham Jazz gig featuring Chris Biscoe’s Profiles Quartet. The band played music by Eric Dolphy which features on their excellent album Gone In The Air. They also performed a couple… Read More ›
Tomorrow evening is one of those when the West Midlands feels more like London, or New York, or anywhere that presents just too much choice. There are gigs all over the place: gigs in concert halls, gigs in pubs, gigs… Read More ›
Birmingham Jazz has re-emerged with the start of a new programme of smaller gigs in pubs, and two choice partnerships to get things underway. This is how they put it in a press release just received: “Jazz fans throughout the… Read More ›
One of the recent highlights of the Rush Hour Blues programme on early Friday evenings at Symphony Hall was the appearance of the Chris Biscoe Profiles Quartet. If you missed the chance to hear the saxophonist known for his work… Read More ›
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