Created in Birmingham

Frankie Ward interviews Mary Wakelam of Birmingham Jazz and they discuss winning her BBC bursary, her new band Maylight, Rush Hour Blues, bringing jazz into Birmingham’s music venues, Gigbeth and resonance events:

Tomorrow I’ll be offering some tickets for the next resonance events shindig at the Town Hall.  There might be a question from the interview, so take notes.

Coming up from Birmingham Jazz:

• Wednesday 24th September
  Jazz Club with Maylight at The Rainbow, Digbeth (£3)
• Thursday 25th September
  Sara Colman Album Launch at The Glee Club (£8/£6)
• Tuesday 30th September
  James Bashford Quintet at The Jam House (free)
• Friday 3rd October
  resonance events presents The Heritage Orchestra (playing the music of Amon Tobin) the Lizzy Parks Band, DJ Cro plus guests
  The Town Hall at 7.30pm, live music starts at 9pm (£15.00)
• Friday 3rd October
  Rush Hour Blues – Mike Hatton’s MHJQ in the Symphony Hall Foyer (Free)

If you’ve not come across them before, there are other CiB interviews on Vimeo with the likes of Capsule, 7 Inch Cinema and Ditto Music with more to come.

• Donald Savage report and evaluation
  Remember Donald Savage’s Invisible Arts Exhibition Programme? Well the evaluation report is out with input from luminaries such as Mr Whatby (Conservative Counselling) amongst others
• The Rice Show
  A kind of automatic collective memory/aggregator thing for the upcoming Stan’s Cafe production ‘Of All The People In All The World’. Anything tagged thericeshow should show up on there
• CELR: Brownfield canvas: how the Arts can support the regeneration of brownfield land
  Happening on 25 Sept at The Tower Ballroom and presented by the Arts Council “The event will also include a focus on the Arts as a creative medium, which can help transform a space, enriching a community or an area through its processes”
• Rich Batsford – Project X Presents: Digital Dystopia Sat Sept 13
  “You are cordially invited to the one and only performance of our unique Project X Presents event Digital Dystopia”. Just a week to go, there are some snippets of info about what’s going on here. I’m quite excited about this
• Birmingham Words – Storytelling in Birmingham
  The Traditional Arts Team have some upcoming storytelling events in Birmingham, happening once a month at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath
• Birmingham Jazz News: September Newsletter
  A couple of chances to check out Maylight with Lizzy Sparks – for free at the Town Hall as part of Light Night then at the Rainbow later in the month. There’s a preview of Oct too, with the very exciting prospect of The Heritage Orchestra performing Amon Tobin’s music
• 7inch september listings
  A nice big long list of events for September, lots of filmic stuff and some other things too. Plus a call for someone with money to burn to convert Kings Heath’s recently closed bingo hall back into a cinema… anyone?

Now this is an impressive line-up of events:

• Saturday 24th – Tinariwen
• Sunday 25th – Resonance Events presents The Herbaliser and Chris Read while Mad Flow, DJ Maxwell and Chromatouch provide the local talent.
• Monday 26th – Capsule & Fierce present a Julian Cope lecture plus a screening of Haxan with live soundtrack.

The Saturday night is particularly interesting. It’s a joint Town Hall/Birmingham Jazz production and is billed as a relaxed club night following in the steps of the Town Hall’s all-night jazz sessions of the 50s. The Herbaliser have a new album out on Ninja Tunes and this is the first night of their tour.

Chris Read promoted Substance at the Medicine Bar with Roc 1 and, especially back when it was on every Thursday, there was no better place in town to be. He’s returning to Birmingham after picking up rave reviews for his The Diary mixtape which condenses a 801-track history of hip hop into 70 minutes. It has to be heard to be believed and can be downloaded free from his website.

It’s really good to see the Town Hall being used in this way. Sure, there are plenty of safe, bland acts booked – I expected that – but this weekend they’re putting on one of the most varied leftfield programmes of any venue in the city, and that I didn’t expect. In fact I could quite happily spend my whole weekend down there.