Birmingham goes jazz festival mad this weekend, with the second Mostly Jazz Festival filling the little Moseley park with music, while the 27th Birmingham International Jazz & Blues Festival takes care of the rest of the city.
Mostly Jazz has identified a vital strand of modern, mainly instrumental popular music where jazz meets all kinds of other things, like funk, soul and dance music.
So, tomorrow the line-up highlights include the jazz meets electronica of The Cinematic Orchestra, Radio 1 DJ Gilles Peterson, and soul singer Alice Russell.
On Saturday the main stage boasts the amazing and unclassifiable Matthew Herbert Big Band, jazz trumpeter Matthew Halsall and the nonagenarian Andy Hamilton with his Blue Notes, while there is a second smaller stage programmed by Birmingham Jazz and featuring some of the fine young bands from this city. The line-up here includes the Levi French Trio, the Steve Tromans Debop Band and the Beats & Pieces Big Band.
Booker T
On Sunday Craig Charles’s Funk & Soul Club commandeers the main stage, and the headliner is that hero of Stax organ soul, Booker T. With his band the MGs, he recorded the classic Green Onions back in 1962, and hasn’t stopped making soulful, good-time music every since.
Another highlight for punk-funk aficionados is the welcome return of early ‘80s sensations Pigbag.
The smaller stage on Sunday is taken over by the Yardbird and includes a DJ set by Craig Charles himself.
Mostly Jazz really is a great little festival, beautifully contained in this small park and, if last year is anything to go by, the atmosphere is just right. You can get a ticket just for a day or the whole weekend, and there are special prices for families and children. For more information, go to www.mostlyjazz.co.uk
The Birmingham International Jazz & Blues Festival opens tomorrow and runs right through to Sunday, July 10. As usual, the players come from all over the world, and this year there are 176 gigs in 72 venues with over 90 per cent of them free of charge. Venues range from pubs to shops to museums and art galleries, and there are also performances in the city’s streets, parks and along the canals.
It also stretches out as far as Dudley Zoo, the Black Country Living Museum and Warwick Castle.
There are just too many gigs to start picking out highlights, but note that the Festival’s patron Digby Fairweather will be part of an all-star City Swing Session at Star City tomorrow evening at 7pm, with the band including Alex Garrett on tenor, Mark Nightingale on trombone, Brian Dee on piano and Roy Forbes on drums.
For the full line-up of who’s where and when, go to www.bigbearmusic.com/bijf – there’s an online brochure you can browse through. And more on this festival next week.
