The space Oliver Knussen fills in the world of music is immense, and not only because of his big, genial frame. Busy as a most probing, perceptive conductor (and not only of contemporary music), he still somehow manages to find time to produce compositions of fastidious clarity and engagement.Read
I’m getting a bit worried about calendars and diaries and clashes. The jazz scene in Birmingham is a healthy one but it’s not particularly big, and so it seems unfortunate that, for example, Friday and Tuesday evenings seem to have become popular.Read
After a relatively quiet couple of weeks in Birmingham, this is something of a bumper week for jazz, with two major trios visiting the city for two unmissable gigs.Read
Do you have some friends who find it difficult to share your love of jazz because they find it too sedate? Do they need a bit more rock ‘n’ roll energy in their live music?Read
Music students are home for the holiday so why not meet student pals and play with the Birmingham Festival Orchestra, formed last year? A full symphony orchestra rarin’ to go.Read
Listening to Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem with its alternative piano-duet accompaniment makes one realise what a curate’s egg the piece is, even though the arrangement is by the composer himself.Read
For a part-time orchestra (many of its members have day jobs unconnected with music) the Sinfonia of Birmingham is actually rather good. Indeed, there were times on Sunday when trying to make distinctions between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ became little more than an exercise in critical nitpicking.Read
On the face of it a concert of eleven pieces by different composers might have suggested a musical hotchpotch, but not so here. The disparate elements of this BCMG package, devised by John Woolrich as part of the BBC’s Music Nation weekend, had been cleverly moulded into a meaningful whole, with tribute and homage as the common vein.Read
Programme notes verging on the pretentious led to confusion with constant references to death in ‘variable dustings of sound’. Fine playing throughout however, from some of Birmingham’s top musicians.
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