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“So What!” are back - Peter King returns - Andy's 90th Birthday Party; First photos on-line already - Sonny Bradshaw & Myrna Hague at he Birmingham Jazz Fest - You've seen the Party, get the Poster - Andy in Buffalo

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!!MORE NEW VIDEO!!

New YouTube and Google video includes Patsy Fuller and Dr Harp’s Medicine Band, not to mention all the stuff already up there including Dennis Rollins, David Murray and Hal Singer.

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HELP PROMOTE BEARWOOD JAZZ BY DOWNLAODING & DISPLAYING OUR POSTER

SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART

Updated 23/4/08

THE GUARDIAN - "Andy Hamilton... ...Caribbean saxophonist with a romantic purr like the sound of the waves"
Date	BEARWOOD CORKS CLUB	Price
May 15	HELEN McDONALD & Her All Star Band	£4/3(concs)
May 22	Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
May 29	JAM NIGHT with Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
June 5	Danny Healy (Aus) Quartet	£4/3(concs)
June 12	Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
June 19	PETER KING & The Tony Richards Trio	£5/4(concs)
June 26	JAM NIGHT with Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
July 3	Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
July 10	Sonny Bradshaw & Myrna Hague with Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes Birmingham International Jazz Festival	£5/4(concs)
July 17	Ralph Allin (Violin) Quartet	£4/3(concs)
July 24	The Notebenders	£4/3(concs)
July 31	JAM NIGHT with Andy Hamilton & the Blue Notes	£4/3(concs)
SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART UP & COMING MAY/JUNE Ultimately Hilary Clinton may or may not make a successful comeback in the US Presidential race, but in our May/June schedule we have two guaranteed comebacks for you. The first is the "So What!" Jazz Orchestra. So What regrouped late last year for the Steve Francis Memorial Concert and eveyone told them they should get back together. Now they have and May 8th at Corks is their first gig. "So What!" are made up mostly of MYJO graduates and led by former MYJO MD Mike Beaumont. Expect great arrangements, geat musicianship and plenty of space for the soloists to improvise. The other comeback is Peter King on June 19th. Peter King had a health scare last year. He had to cancel his gig at Bearwood Corks, but he was back playing in time for his benefit concert at Ronnie Scott's and now he's making a welcome return to Corks Club. Peter King is the big name in British Bebop and one of the finest Alto Sax players anywhere. On May 15th London based singer, Helen McDonald will be retuning to her home town to play a concert with her own band. Helen McDonald has established quite a reputation both as a solo artist and with the London Bridge Ensemble. The band is lead by Edgar Macías and features Chris Bowden, Miles Levin and Tom Hill. Can't be bad! June is a great month for Sax Players The other guest slot in June is filled by Australian Tenor player, Danny Healy. Danny learnt his craft in Melbourne, a hotbed for Australian Jazz and when he walked into Corks Club a few months ago and jammed with Andy and Dutch he blew the roof off the place. With Peter King playin in June as well, it's a great month for Sax Players. JULY We have two excellent visiting acts for you in July. The first is Sonny Bradshaw and Myrna Hague, who join Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes on July 10th for the Birmingham Jazz Festival. A living legend, Sonny Bradshaw is a bandleader, producer, promoter, composer, arranger, recording artiste and much much more. As a pioneer of Jamaican Jazz he is one of the great influences on all modern Caribbean Music. His wife and partner Myrna Hague is one of the worlds outstanding Jazz Vocalists. The second, a week later on the 15th is Birmingham based Violin virtuoso, Ralph Allin. Ralph Allin is one of the foremost names in Gypsy Jazz, and it wouldn't be an understatement to say that is unique genius spellbinds audiences. Expect to be entertained. The week after that the Notebenders Big Band make a return visit. With all this and the regular Andy Hamilton & The Blue Notes in between there is plenty to look forward to at the Bearwood Corks Club. We look forward to seeing you! In the Pipeline 10th July - Sonny Bradshaw and Myrna Hague SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART PROMOTE US MAY/JUNE Download our May/june poster as a full colour Print Quality PDF (File size = 2.3meg) and help spread the word!! Also download the companion poster (File size = 2.9meg) . This poster has brief bios of all the Artists. The posters are all A4 size, but if you're printing from Adobe Reader or Acrobat you will have the option of scaling the document to fit Printer margins. This will allow you to print it to A3 size if you have access to an A3 printer. To download just right click (Mac users control click) on the text about the poster you want to download and save to disc. If you don't have Adobe (Acrobat) Reader you can download it for free from http://www.adobe.co.uk ANDY’S 90th BIRTHDAY SOUVENIR POSTER We produced this fabulous poster specially to promote Abdy's 90th Birthday Gig. You can buy it as a high quality A3 print, printed on a professional quaity laser printer with full Post Script. The price is just £5, and you can buy it at Corks Club gigs. Just give us an email first to make sure I remember to bring some down.   SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART THE CLUB At Bearwood Corks Club we run Jazz every Thursday, and, as Corks Club is a Social Club, the new venue makes for an affordable night out in a purpose built Function Room. You'll find us on the corner of Bearwood Road and Sherwood Road virtually opposite Safeways - watch out for our new banner - see the picture on our Map page. We would like to thank everyone who's attended and helped to spread the word. Let's keep the momentum going or as Andy's Vocalist, Vic Evans, always says "tell you're friends and your enemies too". If you want to know more about us and get regular updates on our programme click the Contact button to join our mailing list,and, remember, if you like Jazz and you haven't seen Andy Hamilton and the Blue Notes you've not been to Birmingham or the Black Country. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART GUESTS & JAMS OH WHAT A NIGHT! Garry Corbett took this wonderful photo of Andy on stage at his 90th Birthday Party at Bearwood Corks, and posted it on his Flickr site the same night. We feel it says everything. It was a fabulous night with a wonderful party atmosphere. Corks was packed to the rafters and, of course, there was great music from Andy, Scott Hamilton and all the other great musicians. Garry has now posted more pictures, so click on the picture to go to the page the picture is on or click here to go to Garry's Flickr Corks Club pages. Curtis is the latest in a long line of Sax players to get their chance to perform in public with Andy Hamilton and The Blue Notes at the Corks. We now have video of him and others in our VIDEO GALLERY Many of these musicians learn under Andy Hamilton and/or study at the Ladywood Community School of Music while they often hone in their talents playing with the Notebenders Big Band. You'll find a lot more flicks and snaps of live performance in the EVENTS section of the Ladywood Community School of Music's website - click on JAMMING! SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART STOP PRESS ANDY HAMILTON IN BUFFALO While Andy Hamilton was in New Yorrk recently he flew upstate to Buffalo where he used to play in the 1940s. The cream of Buffalo's Jazz Musicians put on a special show for Andy, and you can find out more about it on the WIBV TV News 4 Website. They have a feature article with links to a couple of videos. We've put links to the appropriate pages below: The News Article Four minute video Twelve minute video interview AND ’ES A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW Following swiftly on the back of his MBE, Andy Hamilton has been awarded a "Fellowship of the Birmingham Conservatoire". If Andy continues to reap in awards at this rate he'll soon be running out of space to put them all. You can find out more on the JazzWestMids website or in my NowPublic section. Andy Hamilton has been awarded the MBE in the New Years Honours, a worthy accolade for a man who has done so much for Jazz and the West Midlands. For more information go to the BBC News page about New Years Honours in the West Midlands BEARWOOD JAZZ ARCHIVE I've started an Archive Section to house old articles from our front page to clear space for new information. The Archive currently houses features on the David Murray / Hal singer gig and Andy Hamilton's return to the Zaka among other things. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART ART Fans of our “resident artist”, Chris Murray will be pleased to see that there has been a major upgrade to his site and that it has been moved to some ad-free webspace. You will find it at www.onlinejones.co.uk/chrismurray and there are lots of recent paintings up there with more to come shortly. Photographer Garry Corbett has been snapping away at Corks. He amazingly got his photos that he took on the Silvershine night, where David Murray and Hal Singer guested, up on his Flickr site by 11am the next day (or so I've been told). This photo of Vic Evans hands drumming is one of his. Dick Jones (that's me folks!) has painting, sculpture, drawings and prints on the web, and now has a section dedicated to jazz photography. The site now has the domain name www.onlinejones.co.uk even if it's still hosted on free space. Jazz Photographer, Russ Escritt has a second website, http://www.russescritt.co.uk . This site features many photos of Andy Hamilton and the Bluenotes as well as images of the many stars who have guested with him over the last ten years. Russ’s original site http://www.russpix.co.uk  has been redesigned and now features many of the national and international jazz names Russ has photographed. SCHEDULE - UP & COMING - PROMOTE US -THE CLUB - GUESTS & JAMS - STOP PRESS - ART
The Ladywood Community School of Music offers affordable classes in Saxophone, Trumpet, Piano, Guitar, Violin, and Drums with the possibility of doing other instruments. Run out of Ladywood Health and Community Centre it is the brain child of Andy Hamilton. Click on picture to find out more about us. Andy Hamilton’s Sunday lunchtime is back but only once a month. There's also a monthly Saturday gig at the Symphony Hall and another Sunday one at a new Afro Caribbean Centre in the Dudley Road - see press for details.   Bearwood Live Jazz is always building up content on all the great musicians who play here, with web or e-mail links to the musicians where possible. Keep watching this space as we're hoping to make it into one of the most exciting Jazz sites around. This site is built by Dick Jones and any enquiries specifically about the site should be directed to him. This site is best viewed in version 5 browsers or better, though it sort of works in version 4. My personal recommendation is Firefox (2.0) from Mozilla. It's got "tabbed browsing" which will come as sweet relief for anyone still stuck on old browsers like Explorer 6, a beautifully simple interface and it's much more secure. To download for free go to http://getfirefox.com/ Definitely the best browser for the blind and visually impaired. Opera's toolbars take up more room than Firefox, but it's got a brilliant page zoom which enlarges images as well as text, it's easy to stop images loading if you want and you can use voice recognition and/or keyboard shortcuts to work it. Windows users can now get version 7 which also has tabs. I've put up more info on the various browsers available on my site at http://www.onlinejones.co.uk/browsers.html site index