Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - What's On Jazz - Apr -May 2019

EASTSIDE JAZZ CLUB

WHAT’S ON

THU 30 MAY

SOWETO KINCH

A PRIL - M AY ’19 0121 331 5909 | BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS /RoyalBirmCons

@BirmConsJazz

Birmingham City University

A

Abstract Visions of a Foreign Land

warm welcome to the latest edition of the Eastside Jazz Club listings. We’re in the season of projects, prizes and guest artists and you’ll see we are also keeping up with our hosting of major international names in contemporary jazz.

JAZZ DEPARTMENT END OF TERM PARTY

Errolyn Wallen

Anna Palmer

6.30pm Jazz Orchestra with guest vocalists 6.45pm GHQuba Jazz Orchestra – directed by Gareth Howell 8.00pm Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra 8.30pm Township Band from African Sketchbook 9pm DJ set

Our South Africa Festival on 9 May will be a great day out and is virtually a mini festival in its own right; not to be missed. Also advertised here are our gigs at Cheltenham Jazz Festival which include students working with John Surman and our exciting new Paris-Birmingham exchange project.

£15 (£12) It’s been a long term! Come and join us to let off some steam before the well-earned break coming up. We have our friends from the Opera School joining us as celebrity guest singers and you can dance freestyle to the rest of the bands on offer.

The Tony Levin Drum Prize is always a great concert and features jazz tutors Jean Toussaint and Arnie Somogyi and we also have the iconic British jazz headline that is Partisans. Add to this guest artist projects for the students from Patrick Cornelius, Phil Robson and Soweto Kinch and you have an unbeatable showcase of incredible music. As one of our regulars said recently, “There’s so much going on here there’s no time to go anywhere else!”

Jeremy Price Head of Jazz, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

FRI 12 APR

Hope to see you there.

WED 10 APR

JAZZ EXCHANGE: PARIS AND BIRMINGHAM

STEVE SAUNDERS PRESENTS: ABSTRACT VISIONS OF A FOREIGN LAND

6.30pm Support 7.30pm Main Show £8 (£6)

6.30pm Support 7.30pm Main Show

We welcome the arrival of jazz students from Paris Conservatoire to start a collaborative project with our own jazz students. Tonight will be a presentation of the two groups playing as separate sextets before we merge them into three quartets of 50/50 Paris/Birmingham jazz students. They play again at EJC on Fri 3 May, and later on Sat 4 May at 11am at the world-renowned Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

Gathering some of the UK’s finest improvisers and musicians, Abstract Visions of a Foreign Land is Steve Saunders’s most ambitious composition to date. Devised for an eleven-piece ensemble, this six-movement composition amalgamates influences from modern jazz circles with the language of contemporary classical composers, most notably spectral composers such as Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail.

The work aims to coalesce the spheres of improvisation and frequency-based composition and is titled after the process of image formation in the brain, a concept explored deeply throughout the work; our brain can form lucid, extremely vivid images of worlds we have not yet seen, formed entirely from words on a page or aural descriptions - ever-changing images that seem so real we form deep attachments to them, yet they can be strikingly different from the actualities of these worlds.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

THU 2 MAY

BRC LATE 9pm £5 per event. Day tickets available.

See website for details.

WED 1 MAY

£8 (£6)

Credit: Hugo Glendinning

An all-star line-up bring today’s one day festival celebrating Birmingham Record Company to a close.

This events features sets from Conservatoire tutors and graduates including Khyam Allami, Luke Deane, Anna Palmer, Howard Skempton and Errollyn Wallen.

FRI 3 MAY

JAZZ EXCHANGE: PARIS AND BIRMINGHAM 5pm Paris-Birmingham Quartet 1 5.45pm Paris-Birmingham Quartet 2 6.30pm Paris-Birmingham Quartet 3 £8 (£6) Three back-to-back quartet sets from the previously mentioned 50/50 Paris/Birmingham jazz students. Before arrival, the students shared original recordings and compositions, and have been working on imaginative, creative sets of contemporary jazz in preparation for their Cheltenham Jazz Festival debut at Parabola Arts Centre, Sat 4 May at 11am.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

SAT 4 MAY

Bokani Dyer Trio

JAZZ EXCHANGE: PARIS AND BIRMINGHAM

WED 15 MAY

Phil Robson

GUEST ARTIST: PHIL ROBSON PRESENTS

11am Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Parabola Arts Centre

6.30pm Small band 1 7.30pm Small band 2

£10

£12 (£10)

Presenting some of the finest student musicians in Europe, this showcase of contemporary jazz brings together talent from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Conservatoire de Paris – one of the top institutions for studying music in France – to form new bands.

Phil Robson presents a gig of two senior students’ small bands. Phil has spent the last couple of days coaching these guitar-led bands, the repertoire of which will include some originals of Phil’s and some new compositions by the students. UK born and now NYC based Phil Robson is internationally regarded as a highly versatile and creative player who appears in all kinds of diverse settings, as well as being a being a renowned bandleader and composer.

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

SAT 4 MAY

JOHN SURMAN, JOHN WARREN AND THE BRASS PROJECT LIVE

Partisans

2.15pm Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Town Hall Main, Stage £20 (£10) To mark his 75th birthday, master saxophonist John Surman presents a rare live performance of The Brass Project co-led by the gifted composer John Warren. The music is distinguished by a sumptuous sound and deftly placed solos, inspired by the extraordinary 19th century journeying of Warren’s grandfather. The original rhythm team of bassist Chris Laurence and drummer John Marshall provide momentum for a 10-piece brass ensemble drawn from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s jazz course.

SAT 4 MAY

TOWNSHIP BAND 7pm Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Free stage Free

SUN 5 MAY

ASHTON SMITH SEXTET 4pm Cheltenham Jazz Festival – Free stage Free

THU 9 MAY

SOUTH AFRICA FESTIVAL 1pm Festival Opening: Pieter-Dirk Uys 1.45pm Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Jazz Orchestra: Let It Be Told 2.45pm, 3.30pm, 4.30pm, 5.15pm, 6.30pm Assorted sets (Continuing with DJ sets, string orchestra and Sounding Cities) 7.30pm Bokani Dyer Trio Set 1 8.30pm Bokani Dyer Trio Set 2 9.30pm Township Band £10 (£8) Royal Birmingham Conservatoire now has extensive connections with South Africa through outreach programmes, distance learning and exchange students, so we are delighted to present this festival of South African music and musicians.

THU 16 MAY

GUEST ARTIST: PARTISANS 6.30pm Support: James Owston 7.45pm Set 1 9pm Set 2 £12 (£10) Since their formation in 1996, Partisans have been thrilling audiences with their ferociously energetic performances. Hailed as breaking the ground for the new wave of British jazz and described by BBC Radio Jazz on 3 as ‘One of the most exciting all-star experimental groups in Jazz today’, Partisans is co-led by two of the pre-eminent musicians of their generation, Phil Robson (guitar) and Julian Siegel (tenor sax and bass clarinet).

The quartet’s line-up is completed by Thaddeus Kelly (bass) and Gene Calderazzo (drums).

“Restless, almost reckless energy… delirious listening… consistently thrilling.”

BBC Music Magazine

The Bokani Dyer Trio’s performance is supported by Jón Ferrier, Peter Bacon, Brian Homer and Tony Dudley-Evans.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

Patrick Cornelius

Soweto Kinch

THU 23 MAY

GUEST ARTIST: PATRICK CORNELIUS 6.30pm Repertoire selection £15 (£12) Includes entry to the Tony Levin Drum Prize Patrick Cornelius presents his octet music played by senior Royal Birmingham Conservatoire jazz musicians.

Cornelius’s most recent album While We’re Still Young, which he’ll be showcasing tonight, features original music for jazz octet inspired by the timeless poetry of A.A. Milne.

Originally commissioned by Chamber Music America and featured on NPR’s “JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater,”

“[his] original works show a dusky elegance that owes much to Wayne Shorter while retaining a unique identity.”

JazzTimes

“A self-assured young saxophonist in the postmodern mainstream.”

The New York Times Tony Levin

THU 23 MAY

THE TONY LEVIN DRUM PRIZE 7.45pm The Tony Levin Drum Prize 9.15pm Winners Set £15 (£12) Includes entry to the Patrick Cornelius gig Jean Toussaint sax Arnie Somogyi bass Jazz drum legend and much-loved Conservatoire tutor, Tony Levin passed away in February 2011. His legacy still very much lives on with us and one of the forms in which this happens is the continuation of the Tony Levin Drum Prize. Tony’s plan was that each student finalist would play a short set with fellow Jazz Department tutors to determine which student is most deserving of the accolade of ‘most swinging’.

Witness a high-energy concert and a spotlight on future careers in jazz drumming: a ‘happening’ as Tony would say.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

THU 30 MAY

GUEST ARTIST: SOWETO KINCH 6.30pm Support: Matt Holmes 7.45pm Set 1 9pm Set 2 £15 (£12) To celebrate the great news that award-winning saxophonist, composer and well-known BBC presenter Soweto Kinch is joining the Jazz Department’s tutorial team, Soweto is presenting two student bands he’s been working with since the beginning of the summer term. We look forward to developing this connection with probably Birmingham’s best-known jazz artist.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

FRI 31 MAY

AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ ORCHESTRA 6.30pm Support: Matt Holmes’s Bawaa Project 7.45pm Set 1 9pm Set 2 £15 (£12) A collaboration between Conservatoire jazz and percussion departments, this night of salsa music is for dancing!

Early booking is advised.

EASTSIDE JAZZ CLUB MONDAYS BIG BAND NIGHTS

THURSDAYS GUEST NIGHTS

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Jazz Orchestra and Ellington Orchestra perform.

International jazz artists and bands drawn from the immediate jazz scene.

6pm Doors 6.30pm-7.15pm Set 1 - Repertoire selection 7.30pm-8.15pm Set 2 - Themed repertoire

6pm Doors 6.30pm-7.15pm Support Set 7.45pm-8.30pm Guest Artists Set 1 9pm-9.45pm Guest Artist Set 2

WEDNESDAYS EJC PRESENTS

FRIDAYS FRIDAY NIGHT JAZZ

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire guest artists or students present contemporary jazz projects.

From singer-songwriters to our Afro-Cuban Band and anything from folk-jazz, gypsy and swing.

6pm Doors 6.30pm-7.15pm Set 1 - Jazz Combo 1 7.30pm-8.15pm Set 2 - Jazz Combo 2

6pm Doors 6.30pm-7.15pm Support Set 7.45pm-8.30pm Friday Night Session 1 9pm-9.45pm Friday Night Session 2

WANT MORE? For full information on our upcoming gigs, including biographies and backgrounds on our esteemed line-ups, visit bcu.ac.uk/concerts Royal Birmingham Conservatoire 200 Jennens Road B4 7XR FOR UPDATES AND NEWS OF EASTSIDE JAZZ CLUB EXPERIENCES FOLLOW: Please note: Listings correct at time of going to print.

@BirmConsJazz

@JazzTromboneUK