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BBC Big Band
Building on the strong links with Symphony Hall, the BBC Big Band is to become a partner with Performances Birmingham as an Associate Ensemble of Town Hall, Birmingham in the Re-opening Season at the newly-renovated Town Hall.
Britain’s finest big band will play in six concerts, to be recorded for BBC Radio 2, as well as participating in education and workshop performances, from October 2007. The Band also played a prominent part in the Re-opening Festival concert and in its own concert later on in the Festival, featuring Kurt Elling.
The BBC Big Band is probably best known for its regular Monday night show, Big Band Special on BBC Radio 2, as well as on BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Line Up. It also reaches worldwide audiences through the World Service, satellite radio and the internet.
The band has played with stars such as George Benson, Van Morrison, Georgie Fame, Tony Bennett, George Shearing, Michel Legrand, Cleo Laine, Lalo Schifrin, Michael McDonald and Ray Charles. The band regularly features on the UK festival circuit, and concert tours with major artists have regularly taken the band abroad
Black Voices
A capella ensemble Black Voices was established in 1987 by Bob Ramdhanie and Carol Pemberton. All the performers were born and grew up in Birmingham.
The five original members of Black Voices have all come through the black churches and have been thoroughly grounded in the music of a black international community. Currently, the group operates as a professional collective, researching and rehearsing with five to nine members, but maintaining its tradition of performing as a quintet.
Black Voices’ wide repertoire covers gospel, spirituals, reggae, blues, jazz, popular songs and traditional African and Caribbean music. Crossing language and cultural barriers, the group’s performances are powerful, uplifting, emotional and inspiring.
Particular highlights for the group have included performing for Nelson Mandela in South Africa and London, performing for the Royal family and the Pope, supporting Ray Charles and performing in the BBC Proms. Black Voices have also had their own BBC Radio 2 a cappella series, presented by Carol Pemberton.
Black Voices are delighted to be an Associate Ensemble of Town Hall, Birmingham, continuing a relationship that began over 12 years ago. The ensemble played a leading role in Hallelujah!, the Town Hall Re-opening Concert, and will be presenting other concerts and collaborating with Performances Birmingham’s flourishing citywide singing programme.
Soweto Kinch
Born in London, England in 1978 to a Barbadian father and British-Jamaican mother, jazz saxophonist and hip hop MC Soweto Kinch is one of the most exciting and versatile young musicians to hit the British music scene in recent years.
Soweto’s music and image have always stood side by side on the UK urban and jazz scenes and his profile in both continue to grow rapidly as he gains more fans with each tour. In 2006 he supported US hip hop legend KRS-ONE and performed alongside the cream of UK urban music – Sway, Blak Twang and Ty – as well as running his own night, The Live Box in Birmingham giving local MCs a chance to deliver their lyrics over the house band’s grooves.
In 2003, Soweto released his debut album, Conversations With The Unseen, a critically acclaimed album featuring his own brand of spectacular jazz, hip hop and rap. This album earned him a clutch of prestigious awards including a Mercury Music prize nomination.
Soweto released his second album in September 2006. Entitled A Life In The Day Of B19, it’s a two-part tale – Tales Of The Tower Block and Basement Fables Traversing jazz, hip-hop and poetry, it weaves a narrative and message of hope through a diverse range of musical worlds.
Associate Artist Soweto Kinch is already the focus of a major commission and related education project, and will use Town Hall as a base for his work as a performer, mentor, composer, and programmer.
Ex Cathedra
Ex Cathedra is delighted to have been invited to become an Associate Artist of the Town Hall and to have the opportunity to develop a long-term partnership with a concert hall which has played such an important part in building Birmingham’s musical reputation. With its historic interior and intimate performing space, Town Hall is an ideal venue for Early Music. In addition to working alongside Performances Birmingham on choral work and commissions, Ex Cathedra will perform a series of major concerts in the venue in forthcoming years, helping to establish it as a flourishing venue for Early Music.
As one of the UK’s finest choirs, and the flagship Early Music ensemble for Birmingham and the West Midlands, recent years have seen Ex Cathedra’s national and international reputation flourish thanks to its trail-blazing performances of Early Music and its role as a leading exponent of choral training and vocal skills education. Since its formation by Jeffrey Skidmore in 1969, Ex Cathedra has grown into a unique musical resource, comprising specialist choir, vocal consort of ten voices, period-instrument orchestra and thriving education programme.
In addition to its own subscription series in the Birmingham region – which spans music from the fifteenth to twenty-first centuries – Ex Cathedra receives a growing number of invitations to appear in festivals and concert series across the UK and Europe.
Jeffrey Skidmore has developed a reputation with Ex Cathedra for inspiring audiences with exciting programming which challenges but is always accessible. 2007, for example, has seen the launch of Ex Cathedra’s third programme of Latin American Baroque music, Fire Burning in Snow, (following the tremendous success of New World Symphonies and Moon, Sun And All Things – both best-selling CDs on the Hyperion label) presented alongside Monteverdi, Bach, Poulenc and a world premiere of John Joubert’s oratorio Wings of Faith.
Orchestra of the Swan
David Curtis and Orchestra of the Swan perform with passion, giving outstanding performances with innovative programming and accessible presentation. OOTS brings all this and more to Town Hall, Birmingham as an Associate Ensemble, presenting great masterpieces and outstanding young soloists in their new Town Hall series of matinees and evening concerts ‘Classical Encounters with Orchestra of the Swan’. Their virtuosic but informal music-making establishes an immediate rapport, and they will bring new audiences to the Hall through a range of programming and education initiatives.
Orchestra of the Swan is a champion of exciting new work and has commissioned John Woolrich, Tansy Davies, Joe Duddell, Errollyn Wallen, Paul Patterson, Joe Cutler, Oscar Bosch, Dobrinka Tabakova and many others. The Spring Town Hall series includes commissions from John Joubert, Alexander Goehr and Joanne Lee.
The Orchestra’s home is at the Civic Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon with residencies in Cheltenham, Redditch and Bedworth, performing at major concert venues and festivals including Symphony Hall Birmingham, Warwick Arts Centre, St John’s Smith Square, St George’s Brandon Hill, Lichfield, Kings Lynn, Newbury, Two Moors, Corsham, Three Choirs and Deal Festivals.
Thomas Trotter
Thomas Trotter is one of Britain’s most widely admired musicians, boasting an international career which has been firmly founded on his relationship with the city of Birmingham. Appointed City Organist in 1983, in succession to Sir George Thalben-Ball, from October 2007 he will preside over two of Europe’s finest instruments in a remarkable partnership of past and present: the historic instrument in Town Hall, Birmingham (1834) and the modern Klais organ in Symphony Hall (2001). Now that Town Hall has re-opened, Thomas Trotter’s weekly series of organ concerts spans both Halls, playing to the contrasting but complementary strengths of these two outstanding instruments.
Thomas Trotter is also Organist at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey in London and visiting Professor of Organ at the Royal College of Music, also in London. In 2002 he won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumental award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to classical music and in July 2004 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Central England.
Alongside his weekly recitals in Birmingham, Thomas Trotter has toured throughout the USA, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has played at many international festivals such as Bath, Salzburg, Edinburgh and the Proms. Of his dozen or so recordings on the Decca label, his Messiaen and Mozart releases were named Gramophone magazine’s ‘Critics Choice’, and a Liszt recording won a Grand Prix du Disque in 1995.
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