A special Jazz Club Friday at the Bartons Arms, in Aston, Birmingham, this week will be a memorial gig to mark the first anniversary of the death of drummer Tony Levin.Read
A remarkable retrospective of Bob Dylan's songwriting career is released next week - but only one of the 75 tracks is sung by Dylan himself. Conrad Cox delves deeper.Read
As its final season approaches its close after a proud 60 years, Birmingham Chamber Music Society continues in what has always been its mission: to facilitate small-ensemble music-making in the heart of the city.Read
It isn’t only soccer that’s allowed to be a game of two halves. It can apply to concerts as well, and last Friday at Bromsgrove Concerts was certainly a case in point.Read
Gil Evans, the great arranger and band leader who played an equal part in the jazz-changing music that Miles Davis made as the 1950s became the ‘60s, continues to be celebrated in what would have been his 100th year.Read
Etta James, the soul singer whose raw, passionate vocals anchored many hits and made the yearning ballad At Last an enduring anthem for weddings, commercials and even President Barack Obama, has died. She was 73.Read
Years of playing as a principal clarinettist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra have blessed Karl-Heinz Steffens with an ear, and an awareness of what goes on within an ensemble. Read
We all know Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg to be a great celebration of German culture, but what Wednesday’s concert performance from the Royal Opera brought was an added layer of festivity, launching as it did half a year of events marking the 21st anniversary of Symphony Hall.Read
It’s saxophones to the fore this week, with four players young and not quite so young, modern and mainstream, in the driving seat in four very different bands.Read
Christmas festivities must be more enthusiastic in the city; either that or our country cousins recover more quickly, certainly if jazz activity is any guide.Read
