Philip Parkin

GREAT BRITISH JAM SESSION HEADS RECESSION-BUSTING BRUM JAZZFEST.

The Birmingham International Jazz Festival is set to celebrate its first quarter of a century in the same way it all started, with an All Star Jam Session.

Back in 1984 Birmingham-based independent record company Big Bear Records organised a jam session, in Cannon Hill Park, featuring the dozen top UK jazz musicians of the day. It was a sell-out, the recorded album won “Jazz Album of the Year” and before the sun went down, Big Bear and the City Council had agreed to launch the Jazz Festival the subsequent year.

So it is only to be expected that the main feature event of the 25^th Birmingham International Jazz Festival will see another amazing array of the top British jazz talent, eleven of them, onstage together at The Botanical Gardens on Thursday 9^th July at 7pm.

It has been many a year since such Jazz Galacticos, poll winners to a man, have been on one stage together. Digby Fairweather, Festival Patron and the only one of the Team of 1984 to play in this year’s version, will lead affairs on trumpet, alongside Enrico Tomasso, also on trumpet, Robert Fowler and Art Themen, tenor saxophones, Mark Nightingale and Ian Bateman, trombones, Jim Hart, vibes, David Newton, piano, Dave Green, double bass, Ralph Salmins, drums and Val Wiseman, vocals.

Between them, they have clocked up appearances alongside the biggest names in the music biz including those of Frank Sinatra, George Shearing , Henry Mancini, Benny Goodman, Humphrey Lyttelton, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Buck Clayton, Charlie Watts Quintet, Count Basie Orchestra, Van Morrison, Robbie Williams, Madonna, Bjork, Macy Gray, Sheryl Crow, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Diana Ross and Bob Dylan.

With 180 jazz festival performances in 70 venues across the City with 90% free to the public, then Birmingham is not the place to be this summer for anyone who doesn’t like jazz.

Europe’s biggest free jazz party will take place in shopping centres, arcades, bars, museums, hotels, cafés, on the streets, even on canal boats and the City’s tour bus while zany Chicago Beat Poet Steve Steinhaus will be making unscheduled appearances on commuter buses delivering his very hip, cool poetry.

Star City will be presenting three important jazz names whose normal environment is Symphony Hall or Town Hall, but it will be free to see Kenny Ball [Friday 3^rd], Alan Price Set [Saturday 4^th] and Pee Wee Ellis Band [Sunday 5^th].

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