I am really looking forward to this gig (Wednesday 28th July at The Rainbow on Digbeth, music at 9pm).  It’s a new trio led by pianist composer Dan Nicholls featuring James Allsopp on saxophones and Dave Smith on drums.  Dan remains the best graduate of the Buirmingham Conservatoire jazz course and is both a truly original composer and a brilliant pianist.  After graduating Dan went off to Copenhagen to study at postgrad level and his music developed even further.  The Hyderabad trio he played with in Birmingham late last year was evidence of this with great compositions bringing out the best in two other players based in Copenhagen.

For the Mirror trio, Dan has brought together two of my absolute favourite UK players in James Allsopp and Dave Smith.  I am not exactly sure what the music will sound like. But I am sure it will be amazing!  Dan himself says:

Mirror is a new ensemble interpreting and reworking the compositions of keyboardist Dan Nicholls. Featuring the distinctive voices of James Allsopp (reeds) and Dave Smith (drums), the music aims for a fluidity between written and unwritten and explores the unexplicable connections between sound and image.

Tony

I was very sad to hear of the deaths last week of both Harry Beckett and Willem Breuker.  Harry Beckett was a fine trumpeter whose playing was a strong point of British jazz from right back in the 1960s.  He didn’t play that often in Birmingham, but always impressed when he did.  I was able to put his quintet on in Cheltenham as part of a club night built around Gilles Peterson’s interest in the 1960/70s period of British jazz and the group played a key part in a memorable evening.

Willem Breuker came to Birmingham on three occasions with the Kollektief he led, playing the Adrian Boult Hall on two occasions, and mac once as part of a weekend dedicated to Dutch contemporary jazz.  I loved the music of the Kollektief both for itself but also for the humour of it all.  Breuker was a delightful man with whom I managed to maintain a friendship, even though he didn’t tour UK after the various tours in the 1990s.  I would see him on visits to the Bimhuis club in Amsterdam and never tired of the humour of the band.

Tony

I am delighted that Kit Downes Trio has been shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Music Award for his album Golden on Basho Records.  Even though the shortlisted jazz album never wins the actual prize, and the judges are sometimes accused of tokenism in always including a jazz album in the list, I have a lot of time for the Mercurys.  Principally it is because the judgements of the best albums of the year are always made on the basis of the actual music and criteria such as sales and image are not considered.  But also the judges seem to have the knack of choosing just the right jazz album at the right time.  I very much doubt that the Golden will win, but the exposure for Kit Downes and the trio will greatly increase sales of the album and, more generally, increase Kit’s profile.  Kit is a fairly recent arrival on the UK jazz scene and the very different aspects of his music that appear on Golden with his trio ( Kit on piano, Calum Gourlay on bass and James Maddren on drums) and on the Troyka and the Golden Age of Steam albums show how talented he is.  Birmingham Jazz is proud that it has presented the trio at the Rush Hour Blues sessions and Troyka at the Jazz Club at the Rainbow sessions.  The Golden Age of Steam, led by saxophonist James Allsopp, will be at Jazz Club at the end of October.

Tony 

Birmingham Jazz presents two nicely contrasting gigs this week.  The Bryan Corbett Quartet (Jam House on Tuesday 20th at 9.30) is a group with four of the top Birmingham players: Bryan on trumpet and flugelhorn, Levi French on keys, Ben Markland on bass and Neil Bullock on drums.  As Bryan now tours in continental Europe a lot with both Us3 and various Czech or Polish bands, the opportunity to hear this great quartet is much rarer.  The last time they played together,  which was at a Rush Hour Blues session in January, it was the first time for 7 months and there was a real sense of occasion with the band immediately gelling and clearly loving playing together again.   Entry is free and the music begins at 9.30.

Soil & Pimp Sessions (Wednesday 21st Hare & Hounds, High St, Kings Heath, doors at 8pm) is a Japanese band which developed a kind of crazy bebop style in Japanese clubs and now tours the world.  It’s a band that will appeal to a clubbing audience without losing the older jazz fan who will recognise its bop style.  They generate a great atmosphere with the audience whipped up by the ‘agitator’ who acts as compere with a megaphone.  This will attract a big crowd and it will therefore be a largely standing audience.

At Rush Hour Blues this week (Friday at 5.30 at Symphony Hall foyer) is Tom Hill’s Outsville, a quartet that features two fine players we areley hear in Birmingham: Ian Ellis on saxophone and Jonathan Taylor on piano. I have always thought that Ian is one of the finest saxophonists in UK, but he has never received the coverage he deserves.

Coming up next week is Mirror, a new trio led by pianist Dan Nicholls featuring James Allsopp on saxophones and Dave Smith on drums.  This is at the regular Jazz Club session at The Rainbow Pub on Digbeth.  This is on Wednesday 28th July at 9pm.

Tony

Chris Mapp’s Gambol appears tonight in the final Sundown Jazz Session at the George IV pub in Bore Street Lichfield as part of the Lichfield Festival.  Gambol was formed for the Harmonic Festival that Chris and Percy Pursglove ran in March this year and features some some fine writing from Chris and a strong lineup with Lluis Mather on sax, Sam Wooster on trumpet, Dan Nicholls on keys, Chris on bass and Jim Bashford on drums.

The sessions take place in a small but attractive room at the George IV pub and have been an excellent showcase for the best young jazz put on in the West Midlands by the Cobweb Collective.  Music begins at 9.30 and goes on till 11-ish.

Tony

The Sundown Jazz Sessions take place in a very attractive small room at the back of the George IV pub in Lichfield and are a part of the Lichfield Festival – great that a prestigious festival like this is supporting the best young jazz in the region.

The room only holds about 30/40 people and was more or less full on Tuesday when I went along, so that plus the excellent acoustics made for a great session with wonderful uncomplicatedly swinging jazz in an informal setting where every note is heard clearly and every facial expression of the players in action is caught!  The music starts at 9.30 and there are usually two sets.

On Tuesday it was a band put together by drummer Andrew Bain featuring Jon Irabagon from the US on alto sax, Percy Pursglove on trumpet and Ross Stanley on keys with Hammond Organ sound.  This was a great band playing a good mix of standards and originals and in a style that was neither too far out nor too mainstream that suited the occasion perfectly.  Jon Irabagon is a very interesting young player now making a name for himself in New York.  He won the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Prize in 2008 and seems equally at home in a straightahead context or in an improvising format.  He is, for example, a key member of the band Mostly Other People Do The Killing, a crazy quintet that plays fast and furious bebop with a kind of rock attitude.    Percy Pursglove made an excellent frontline partner on trumpet complimenting Jon’s varied solos with long flowing lines on the trumpet.  Ross Stanley also added very interesting and inventive solos that avoided the cliches we sometimes get on the Hammond Organ.

Percy Pursglove is featured in an article in this month’s Jazzwise which you can read here.   It’s good that Birmingham players and the great Birmingham scene is beginning to get recognition.

At the Sundown session tonight (Thursday 15th) is the Rob Anstey Quartet featuring Ben Bryden; tomorrow (Friday 16th) it’s the Lluis Mather Band (the one that won the Dave Holland Ensemble Prize) and on Saturday it’s Chris Mapp and his new Gambol band.  All the bands are programmed by the Cobweb Collective.

Tony

In the school year starting from September 2009 Birmingham Jazz along with its partners in the Birmingham Music Hub, CBSO, Symphony and Town Hall, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Sound It Out, has been running a big education project called Banded About funded by the Ministry of Education in Holyhead Secondary School and three primary schools in the Handsworth area, Wattville, St. James and Wilkes Green.  The other four partners in the project have run similar projects in different parts of the city.

The project has been a great success and has exposed young school age musicians to ensemble work and many different styles of music.

The project culminates this Friday (9th July) at the Town Hall with two showcase concerts.  The first from 1.30 to 3 features the primary schools and tickets are free, the second runs from 6.30 to 8.30 and tickets are just £2.50.

Some of the music I have most enjoyed this year has come in the ’sharing’ sessions that are part of the project and I am really looking forward to hearing the various very talented ensembles that have come out of this project.

Tony

Pete Wareham & Seb Rochford- Polar Bear

Photograph courtesy of Russ Escritt

The Mostly Jazz Festival was a big success: great music, very attractive setting and wonderful weather.  I think the two main organisers, Gerv and Carl, did a great job in curating the programme and running the festival; everything ran to time and the attendance was very good, especially on the Saturday. Mostly Jazz has firmly established its niche in the summer festival scene and already has a strong identity, which comes partly from the wonderful Moseley Park, but, more particularly, from the healthy mix of jazz with funk and soul in the programme.  Gerv and Carl also did a good job in bringing together various disparate elements of the Birmingham music scene with Birmingham Jazz, The Yardbird, Leftfoot, The Hare & Hounds and the organisers of the Swing Meadow stage all having a strong presence in the festival.

Particular highlights for me were Portico Quartet and Quantic and the Combo Barbaro both of which summed up the way in which certain styles of music work really well in the open air setting.  I enjoyed most of the bands on the small stage programmed by The Yardbird on the Saturday and Birmingham Jazz on the Sunday; two singers, Lizzy Parks and Sara Colman worked particularly well.  I enjoyed much of the Sun Ra Arkestra set, but, for me, it didn’t have the excitement or the ensemble tightness of the band with Sun Ra himself, which I caught back in the day.  I was disappointed with Courtney Pine’s set, which seemed to go too far down the crowd-pleasing road.  But I did think the two contemporary bands on the Main Stage on the Saturday, Led Bib and Polar Bear, worked well and showed that bands in that style also work well in the open air setting.

So a great success for the first Mostly Jazz Festival.  It should develop into a key, if always small, UK music festival that celebrates jazz, funk, soul and other related genres.

There are some excellent photos of the weekend on Russ Escritt’s new website.  There is also a nice review on the BBC Music Magazine siet.  You can read it here.

Tony

Photograph courtesy of Russ Escritt

The tour was just three dates , opening at the Vortex in London and then two dates in Birmingham, one at the regular Jazz Club session at The Rainbow and the second at the Cobweb Collective session at the Yardbird.  The tour was put together by Birmingham Jazz to enable Jim Bashford, one of Birmingham’s top drummers, to work with three players of international status: guitarist Hilmar Jensson from Iceland known for his work with Jim Black’s AlasNoAxis and his own Tyft, saxophonist and clarinettist Robin Fincker who moves between France and UK and bass player from UK  Johnny Brierley. Both Robin and Johnny are in the Outhouse Quartet.

Most of the material was written by Jim with some extra material coming from Hilmar.  I was most impressed with all this material and by the fact it generated some excellent interaction between the four players.  This was definitely not a band that played heads and then long solos; there was good movement between the written material and the improvisation and the focus was on the interplay between the four players, especially between Hilmar and Robin.  This kind of interaction is always difficult to pull off and, although all three gigs had music of the highest quality, the interaction inevitably came off best on the third gig at the Yardbird.  But it was very positive that the band didn’t go just for an approach based on individual solos.

Three gigs is definitely not enough and we will have to find a way of bringing the band back together!

Tony

The Sunday at the Mostly Jazz Festival, the very welcome new jazz and funk festival taking place in Moseley Park over the weekend of 3rd and 4th July, may not have quite the big names that the Saturday programme has (see blog below), but it does have a tremendous amount of variety and the opportunity to catch some unexpected surprises.  I increasingly prefer to check out smaller stages at festivals and to come away with a feeling for which bands are about to develop a run of interesting performances or recordings.  The Sunday programme definitely offers this opportunity.  This is not to say that there are not big names in the programme: Courtney Pine is almost as big as they come and I have always rated his mix of jazz with urban music.  It’s a big sound and ideal for festival in the open air.  Then there is Cymande II, Afro-funksters from the 70s reforming with two original members, and Andy Hamilton and The Blue Notes. But the band I am most intrigued to hear in this setting is Portico Quartet; I have the feeling that their gentle ambient sound built around the sound of the hang drum mixed in with a strong saxophone sound is perfect for an open air event and the thought of of lying on the grass with a glass of beer and letting their music flow over one is enticing.  Let’s hope the weather allows this to happen!  Certainly Moseley Park is the perfect place for it with the opportunity to picnic with family or friends , and to keep the beer or wine flowing from the drinks tents.

Birmingham Jazz is hosting a stage with a strong lineup with Sara Colman, Aaron Diaz’s Moon Unit, Tim Amann, TG Collective Trio, MC3 and the Birmingham Jazz Youth Group. Birmingham graduate Simon Harries brings his Bright Size Gypsies to the Main Stage; it’s always an entertaining band.  One other event I hope to catch on the Sunday is Entertaining Dad on the Swing Meadow Stage, a film about Raymond Scott, the slightly maverick American composer whose music influenced the soundtracks of the cartoon films of the 50s and 60s.

As I said in my last blog, Mostly Jazz is a great addition to the music scene in Birmingham; it’s in a great setting in Moseley Park (just off Alcester Road in Moseley centre) and it has shown great imagination in its programming.  You can book, or read more about on their website.  Exact timings for the gigs will be announced on the day, but it starts around noon each day and continues till 10.30pm.

Tony