The Jazz World Comes to Sunny Birmingham!

Sunny Birmingham? Well, at least the middle five days of the 23rd Birmingham International Jazz Festival provided a pleasant intermission in 2007’s gloomy weather!

So a memorable first visit of the festival to Dudley’s Black Country Living Museum found jazz fans taking the tram to the authentic Black Country village. Perhaps the jazz was less authentically local (with the Miskolc Dixieland Band from Hungary and Spain’s New Orleans Jump alongside Val Wiseman and Dennis Mowat’s Dixie Syncopators!), but the event was a huge success, to be repeated in 2008.

One of the major appeals of the Birmingham festival is the chance to hear jazz greats in different informal sessions for several days in succession. In 2007 we were privileged to have four days of the great Herb Geller in undiminished form, appearing at the Festival Launch and then playing the Taste of Birmingham festival and any number of bars and restaurants. Rather less famous American saxist Carol Sudhalter also made a great impact in her six gigs in three days and will be back this year.

And, of course, Birmingham would not be Birmingham without the quirky events: a Gospel Workshop in Tesco’s, the Jazz Ramblers entertaining passengers on the train to Dorridge, jazz on the beach (that’s in Chamberlain Square!) with a one-man band...