Jon Tutcher

I think 2009’s been a great year for music in Birmingham. I could go into all sorts of reasons why, but far more interesting is how 2010 is shaping up. The mac is supposed to be re-opening (although I’m not sure on the specifics), the Mostly Jazz festival is running for the first time in June, but best of all (in my opinion) is Harmonic Festival – a new thing run by jazz dons Chris Mapp and Percy Pursglove, as well as Birmingham Jazz and the Cobweb Collective. It aims to celebrate and showcase just how much great new music is going on in Brum – and the line-up so far is very impressive. Harmonic runs March 11th-13th 2010 in a few venues around town, and full details are available on their website. Definitely worth saving the date!

Just found this article by John Fordham published in the Guardian today (thanks LondonJazz):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/dec/17/jazz-noughties

As someone that first got into Jazz in around about Y2K, it’s very interesting reading other people’s views of how the music has changed and grown over the last ten years. As well as the music itself I think that audiences are changing too -  it seems like jazz has become far more popular amongst young people recently, and more students seem to be clued up about whats happening outside of the charts than they were five years ago (Facebook, Spotify, and things like podcasting probably helped). Hopefully numbers at gigs will reflect that soon – the majority of Birmingham University students still turn down the opportunity to see a decent band for free in favour of spending all night at the same three clubs on Broad Street, but live nights seem to be on the up so who knows where we’ll be in 2020!

So, last night, whilst enjoying a great performance by Roy Nathanson at the Barbican Centre, I found out that a very hastily named pop/funk band I play with have our New Year’s Eve gig booked. It’ll be part of  a week-long residency at Club Med Val Thorens, ski pass included, and I’m very excited.

Peter Bacon has brought up an issue on his blog that I’ve been wondering about for a while – the ‘free jazz’ culture in Birmingham. It seems rare that people actually pay for gigs (at least over about £10) in the city centre, so is the amount of live music available to people for free jeapordising audience sizes at the bigger gigs? You can read his blog post and the comments here:

http://thejazzbreakfast.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/the-problem-of-free-jazz

Tomorrow is the first of the University of Birmingham Jazz & Blues Society’s fortnightly jam sessions at the Guild of Students. Particularly looking forward to this one as we seem to have had a huge number of talented first year students join the University this year. Starts at 8PM – come along!

So after settling back into life in Birmingham, I’ve managed to sort through some of the massive amount of shots I took on my A230 whilst on holiday in New Zealand. I’m hoping my limited photography skills can show what an amazing country it is – I’m really hoping I can be back there in the not too distant future!