Urban Folk Quartet; TG Collective. Two GREAT bands. Folk, Jazz, Latin, World. Your call.

New CDs launching this and next month. Shared musicians and connections. Academic rigour, passion and skill. 

New nujazzfolk albums abound in Birmingham this spring. They’re all different, but with common threads. The musicians all work with each other, for a start. Tracking who plays where is bewildering. It’s musical promiscuity of the highest order, and as always with promiscuous behaviour – let’s put this delicately - cross pollination will take place. I think I’ll stop exploring that analogy any further before I get into trouble. 

Both bands here are as much into Jazz as they are Folk. The key is experimentation, adventure, and a lot of fun on the side. The danger is that we take this brave and appealing work for granted. Please, don’t ever do that. Savour it; appreciate it, support it if you like; but don’t take it for granted.  

Birmingham Opera and the New York Met: different creativity, different audiences, different marketing. Same goals.

Opera. Big-budget belters and small-scale savvy. It’s all good… but it’s still a bit of a secret. 

**** March 22: Now Updated with shots from the current BOC production ***

A fat lady. Not singing for BOC

With 21st century media, there’s no connection between what you find and what you pay. Works of towering genius go for free; silly sums are asked for derivative crap. Often, we're charged for the cost of distribution rather than the creativity. I can’t complain when I find brilliance for pennies. Creators, rightly, do. 

Two very different things are going on in Opera in Birmingham. There’s a local company that does brilliant work, so rooted in its market, with passionate local participation, that sell-outs are virtually guaranteed. People fight for tickets. The other operation offers work from one of the most powerful, stylish and all round fabulous companies on this planet, for a relative pittance. They have had to fight, ultimately successfully, for their audience. It doesn't make sense, but it's great all the same.

Micky Greaney and Dan Whitehouse: hearts and souls on the line

Two great talents. Two different creative approaches. Two tracks exclusive to this post.

Richard Shakespeare at Shakeypix

I might horrify a few people here, but I hold that Adele - six Grammy awards this weekend - has a lot in common with Micky Greaney and Dan Whitehouse. Of course, Adele is now rich as Croesus; Dan and Micky certainly aren't. But like Dan and Micky, she rips out great chunks of her heart and soul and presents them in song to the listener, directly, honestly and free of artifice. She, too, is a singer-songwriter. So she still has a tough time of it.  

More than other performers, singer-songwriters need your close attention, because they have something they want to say. It can be deeply personal, intense and passionate; it can be simply the sharing of a whimsical thought. If the audience is open and accepting, a bond forms between performer and listener, and all the pieces fit. 

 When it works it’s a wonderful thing. When it doesn’t work, say in a pub where punters just don't care about what you're doing, it’s painful. A gig last month comes to mind. 

Both Micky and Dan have gigs coming up, detailed at the bottom of this post; both have albums in the works. Both have let me have an exclusive track for the blog. Interviews, links and tracks all follow...

Shambala and Moseley Folk: summer scheming in the bleak midwinter

Quiet relaxing times for Birmingham's festival planners? Not a chance.

I’m so old, I was at festivals in the 60s. Dylan, The Band, Family, Third Ear Band, Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, the Moodies and more, at the Isle of Wight. It was chaotic, good-natured, and, of course, stoned; but not particularly expensive. The next year, Shepton Mallet: Zeppelin, Santana, Fairport, Canned Heat, Byrds, Country Joe, and on, and on, and on. More expensive; indescribable toilets. Just as stoned, of course. The UK Rock Festivals site covers all this rather well. I dug around to see if I could find myself in the crowd shots, but you try picking out one bearded pony tailed bloke with John Lennon shades from dozens of others on the grainy black and white crowd shots. A needle in a suburban hippie haystack. 
 
Those 60s and 70s festivals were full-on free enterprise ventures, overlaid with the faintest idealist ethos. Since then, festivals have - I use the word deliberately - mushroomed. There's hundreds. Some are great, some diverse and eccentric, some super-specialised, and some - too many - built to separate you from your money as efficiently as possible. Idealism is rare. Glastonbury is still seen as cool, by the BBC at least, and is a must-play venue for artists. Others give you little more for your money than touring acts on the take, a sea of mud,  expensive concession stands, and corporate branding upfront and centre.

There are exceptions…..