Created in Birmingham

Birmingham Jazz and Birmingham Town Hall‘s resonance events are well worth catching when they’re on. The last one was in October and featured the Heritage Orchestra and Lizzy Parks among others. A vid’s just gone up on YouTube with a couple of interviews that captures things really rather well.

I saw the The Heritage Orchestra at the Town Hall (one of their rather good resonance events) last month and they were great, so I was chuffed to hear about Birmingham Jazz’s plans for celebrating Stan Sulzmann‘s birthday:

Stan Sulzmann has had a long relationship with Birmingham Jazz and is a Honorary Fellow at Birmingham Conservatoire. So when Stan mentioned that he will be 60 this November, plans were immediately put in place to mark the event in Birmingham with a concert with a small version of The Heritage Orchestra (THO) and with arrangements of Stan’s material by both Jules Buckley and Stan himself.

Stan will be playing with THO’s 13-piece string section plus an extended rhythm section with piano, bass, drums, guitar and percussion. There will also be new material written for the occasion by Stan himself and by THO members Tom Richards and Sam Bullard

Woo-hoo! It’s on Sat 29 Nov at the CBSO Centre and tickets are available NOW!

Info about Stan Sulzmann’s 60th Birthday Celebration is here along with all the other stuff Birmingham Jazz have got on this month (ooh, Portico Quartet on the 28th).

The second resonance events soiree will happen at the Town Hall on Friday 3 October featuring a host of local talent as well as the very excellent Heritage Orchestra performing the songs of Amon Tobin.  Musically, we’re talking jazz and hip hop but soul, leftfield, classical and any number of other styles will feature.

Here’s the full line-up:

The Heritage Orchestra

Lizzy Parks (album launch)

DJ Cro hosting 2 and a half hours of local MC talent including Ko-Syne (Soulthump, Livebox), SPX (Kung Funk), Redbeard (Eat Good) and more

Visuals by Chromatouch

It’s competition time!

I’ve been given a couple of tickets to give away for this.  All you have to do is shout up for them in the comments.  Just some quick rules:

• The first person to claim them takes both the tickets (well, guestlist places)
• No-one CiB-related can play
• No previous competition winners can claim the tickets
• You’ll need to use a proper email address for me to confirm things with you
• I get the final say on any decisions (if it’s really necessary)

So go for it…

Meanwhile, here’s the flyer:

You can also have a nosey at the interview with Mary Wakelam, of Birmingham Jazz, who co-promotes these events.