The Birmingham International Jazz Festival now is in its 23rd consecutive year, is so pleased to welcome an exciting new major sponsor, the leading U.K retailer Tesco.
Tony Fletcher, Corporate Affairs Manager of Tesco said “We are delighted to be associated with an event as highly regarded as The Birmingham International Jazz Festival which this year promises to be a real musical spectacle from start to finish,” while Festival Director Jim Simpson added “this is a most significant move for the Jazz festival and will herald in a new era as we head towards our 25th anniversary in 2009. We are excited and proud to have the support of this great British Institution.”
The Birmingham City Council continues its tremendous support of the festival for the 23rd consecutive year.
Over 10 jazz-packed summer days from July 6th to the 15th Birmingham will become Jazz City UK, with more jazz per square metre than has New Orleans.
Jazz fans and other fun-lovers from all over the country – and further afield – make their way to Birmingham for the biggest and best free jazz party in the UK. Musicians and bands from USA, Spain, France, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Czech Republic and Venezuela line up alongside the best from the UK and from the region to present a feast of some 180 concerts in ten days, almost every one free to the public.
The show opens with a breakfast launch at dawn on Friday 6th July and finishes at midnight with A Night In New Orleans with Professor Longhair’s Farewell Party on Sunday 15th a perfect way to wind down 10 days of hot Jazz. The festival epicentre is in the city with performances in the streets and squares, supermarkets, shopping centres, hotels, cafes, bars and restaurants, but the jazz festival goes further afield with performances in Wolverhampton, Coventry, Solihull, Redditch, Dudley and Leamington Spa.
Launching the festival, and playing eight free shows across the City, will be one of the great living legends of jazz, Los Angeles born Herb Geller whose incredible career includes recording and performing with Dinah Washington, Clifford Brown and many of the great names in jazz.
2007 may just become known as the year of the saxophone with leading players including New Yorker Carol Sudhalter, Jerry Senfluk from Czech Republic, UK’s leading players Alan Barnes, Alex Garnett, Simon Spillet, Shabaka Hutchings, Art Themen and the Midlands own Mike Burney, Joolz Gianni, Andy Hamilton, Chris Bowden and Steve Ajao.
The classic jazz contribution is headed by Hungary’s top two bands, The Miskolc Dixieland Band and The Budapest Ragtime Orchestra. The invasion from Spain includes Europe’s top Blues band, The Lazy Jumpers from Barcelona and four stunning young graduates from The Berklee School of Music in the U.S.A. – Juan Galiardo, Luis Gutierrez, Enrique Oliver and Jaume Llomart as well as the wild and wacky New Orleans Jump Band from Sotogrande.
France is represented by the Django Reinhardt – style Urban Gypsy and one- man-band Bernard Constant L’Homme Orchestre. Hot jazz fiddler Tim Kliphuis comes from the Netherlands and the sensational Elmhurst College 20 piece big band hail from Illinois, USA.
Among the new British bands to look out for are Tipitina, the New Orleans Rhumba Boogie Band from Preston, Essex Jump Jivers The Zoltans and Dixieland wunderkinds from Nottingham, Fidgety Feet.
With more than 100 hours of live music across the city, if you hate jazz, then Birmingham is no place to be in July when there is more jazz about than you can shake a stick at.
Photographs available on request.
For more information contact Lavinia Batchelor at
Big Bear Records, Po Box 944, Birmingham B16 8UT
Tel: 0121 454 7020 Fax: 0121 454 9996
Email: agency@bigbearmusic.com www.bigbearmusic.com
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