Hotdogs

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:

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:

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.

Brumnotes This Is Tmrw - Lewes Herriot

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New stuff for THSH

14th
Dec
2011

Town Hall and Symphony Hall have got a shiny new website and a new video to show off the kind of things they put on.

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).

THSH website

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.

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Town Hall Symphony Hall have released an animation created by Digbeth’s Second Home Studios about the workings of their famous organ.

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.

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Gor blimey, it’s another one of those really long weekends. Here are some things you might want to consider filling all that time with.

For starters, I haven’t got a flyer for this one but Lizzy Parks is playing in the Symphony Hall foyers today (Friday) from 5.30pm to 7pm and it’s free. Info on the THSH website. Or indeed the Birmingham Jazz website.

Earlier in the day (in fact from 12pm to 7pm) head over to Lombard Street in Digbeth for PST’s street party. This here flyer says there’s going to be food, live art and heavy bass. And face painting.

PST street party

MakeIt Zone are having an open day on Saturday.

MakeIt Zone open day

Capsule have got an event at Kings Heath’s Hare and Hounds on Saturday night called Wedlock. Dunno what that’s a reference to but I like the pretty picture.
wedlock

There’s loads of other stuff happening too. Have a look at Live Brum for listings.

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Folk for Free

21st
Oct
2010

Folk For Free

Folk for free is a new monthly event to be held in the Symphony Hall foyer by Moseley Folk starting today at 5.30pm. As the name suggests, it’s free, and welcomes passers by to drop at any time throughout the performance which runs until 7pm.

The first bit of folky treats will come from Boat to Row, who appeared on the Bohemian Jukebox Stage at Moseley Folk Festival last month, with their ‘romantic acoustic sound that is brimming with delicate honesty’.

Playing from next month onwards is as follows;

18 November: Contact. This acoustic duo team sparse acoustic guitar with rhythmic bass lines and melodic vocals.

16 December: Friends of the Stars. Emerging from the ashes of John Peel favourites, The Toques, Friends of the Stars mix looping guitar spirals with country ballads.

20 January: Rob Fellows. “A multi-instrumentalist, Rob Fellows’ brand of acoustic mash-ups and collaborations offers something a little different to the traditional singer/songwriter.”

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A bit more news in the follow-up of Artsfest, this time on the musical front. Over the weekend BBC Radio 3 recorded two homegrown jazz performances for the Jazz Line Up programme, which was broadcast last weekend, on Sunday 26 September.

Recorded at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham bands led by Ben Markland and Percy Pursglove played at the special edition of Rush Hour Blues. The show is currently still available to listen to on BBC iPlayer.

Take a look at this post on the Birmingham Jazz blog to read a bit more about it.

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The Fall Into Paradise

Leading contemporary video artist Bill Viola is currently exhibiting ‘The Fall into Paradise’ at The Public, which runs until 17 October.

Viola’s video installations – submersive environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound – employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity.  Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.

The ten minute film was also created as part of a series to be featured in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, which premieres at Symphony Hall Birmingham on Thursday 23 September.

If you fancy popping down to see exhibition, it’s open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm and is free to visit.

For more information about all events and exhibitions at The Public visit www.thepublic.com or call the box office on 0121 533 7161

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English folk music has never had it so good with Town Hall and Symphony Hall providing an annual showcase for the best traditional folk and contemporary singer-songwriters around in English Originals. This year’s folk weekend is 14-16 May and features the likes of Badly Drawn Boy, Beth Orton, Graham Coxon, Scott Matthews, and more.

Friday 14th May brings N.O.M.A.D to Symphony Hall, followed by Grace and Danger: The Songs of John Martyn. On Saturday there’s an afternoon of free music at Symphony Hall in Folk4Free and The Graham Coxon Power Ensemble perform at Town Hall later. And Sunday bows out with Bellowhead and Jackie Oates at Town Hall.

For more info, check out the THSH website here.

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Mother India weekend

7th
Apr
2010

I saw Mother India: 21st Century Remix in 2008 and it was honestly one of the best things I saw that year. It’s been off on tour since but will be back in Birmingham on Sunday (11 April) to crown Mother India weekend – a bunch of events happening at the Town Hall and Symphony Hall.

This version of Mother India is:

A reinterpretation of the 1957 Indian cinema classic as a 45 minute silent movie with new musical score will be performed live by DJ Tigerstyle, drummer David Shaw and cellist Matt Constantine with Josh Ford as visual editor.

MI21 is a compact, powerful and sensual take on Mehboob Khan’s Hindi masterpiece – a hugely important film in South Asian cinema, known for its iconic imagery and powerful storyline: the common shorthand is to reference it as India’s ‘Gone with the wind’.

Definitely go and see it. Here – here’s the link to get tickets.

Other things happening as part of the weekend:

The first is in association with Birmingham Jazz, the others with sampad and, in some cases, The Drum.

The Mid-day Mantra thing sounds quite good – a variant on the Rush Hour Blues series, I guess. That’ll be happening once a month from now on and will be a freebie.

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Mother India weekend

23rd
Feb
2010

Mother India weekend at Town Hall and Symphony Hall Birmingham will be a journey through the musical heritage of India over 9-11 April, taking in the mystic heights of classical traditions via Anglo-Indian classical fusion to cutting-edge contemporary Asian remixes.

The weekend’s musical journey starts at the pinnacle of Mother India’s classical tradition, with a rare UK recital by santoor maestro and living legend Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. Then we encounter a younger generation of Indian musicians, Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan. These gifted sarod players come from a distinguished classical lineage, but here they take the ancient classical tradition of Mother India on an East-West cross-cultural journey in collaboration with young British cellist Matthew Barley. Finally, we come right up-to-date in a cutting-edge event when young British-Asian artist DJ Tigerstyle explores his heritage and re-visions Mother India, a classic of Indian cinema, in contemporary idiom.

For tickets and more information check out the Town Hall & Symphony Hall website here.

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Harmonic

18th
Dec
2009

Harmonic-1

Harmonic is a jazz festival that’ll be hosted by a few Birmingham venues – The Yardbird, CBSO Centre and Symphony Hall foyer – from 11- 14 March 2010.

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  • Cut-Out
    Not quite sure what the deal is with this one. They’ve got a DIY print studio and are looking for people to submit designs for them to use on T-shirts and so on. A physical shop is apparently coming in summer 09, in the meantime they’re up online with a website (coming soon) and this blog
  • Birmingham Music
    “The Town Hall and Symphony Hall website have launched a new online booking system for their events… Also, as an introductory offer, you can take advantage of free postage on all bookings up to November 30th”
  • Draft Vision for a Birmingham Photospace
    The next meeting about this is on Tues 14 October at 6.30pm in the Library cafe, Birmingham city centre. Seek out the Birmingham Flickr group for how the discussion about this is going; this is a link to the draft vision they’ve prepared
  • Flip Blog – Grads On Walls Event
    The Flip Animation folk put out a reminder for the Animation Forum WM’s Grads on Walls event on Monday (good to see people talking up other people’s events – a very smart thing to do, I’d say)
  • Birminghams Most Stylish – Style Birmingham
    “The 500 people who have made it through this year’s Style Search will be whittled down to just ten this weekend at a special party at Gatecrasher”. Why am I linking to this? Um… just spreading the joy I guess
  • Script screenwriting course
    “Script, in association with Outside Centre, presents an in-depth Introduction to Screenwriting Course” at Wolverhampton’s Light House
  • Plus+: Fazeley Studios 2008 Plus Venue
    Is it me or does the text in the link make no sense. Basically, Fazeley Studios has been chosen as the venue for the 2008 Plus Design Festival. Shame on me for not spotting that they had a blog though, and thanks to Nicky at Digbeth is Good for pointing it out
  • Facebook group – mid*point
    “mid*point is the network for independent theatre companies in the West Midlands” There doesn’t seem to have been any activity on the website for over a year but they’ve just started a Facebook group so something must be going on under the hood
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