Ever wanted to hear your favourite tune given the Beats & Pieces treatment? Here’s your chance… Serious are offering you the opportunity to suggest songs for us to arrange in our own unique way and perform on the rest of our tour. The performance at Ronnie Scott’s on 20th February will be filmed and posted online, and we’ll even throw in a signed album and some other goodies for whoever makes the winning suggestion. Head on over to the Serious blog before Friday 3rd to leave your ideas, there’s some cracking ones already but always room for more!
Posted by on 31/01/2012 at 10:43 in misc, news. Leave comments here.
Thanks to everyone who came down to our gig at Turner Sims in Southampton over the weekend, it was a great way to kick off our tour! It was also the first time that copies of ‘Big Ideas‘ were available for sale, so a pretty exciting moment for us…
Thought I’d share this photo of Anthony and Simon in our ‘tour bus’ on our journey down – we’ll be trying to post as many pictures, videos and other interesting things as we can. Keep an eye on our tumblr page which is where we’ll upload most stuff, or follow @beatspiecesband on twitter where all the tumblr posts will be automatically tweeted – for a more personal touch follow me (Ben) @beatsnpieces
See you at the next gig in Manchester on Feb 16th!
Posted by on 30/01/2012 at 22:35 in gigs, misc and tagged manchester, rncm, southampton, tour, tumblr, turner sims. Leave comments here.
Delighted and very excited to finally be able to reveal full details of our brand new album! Here’s the low down: its called Big Ideas and will be released on 12th March 2012 on Efpi Records. It features 8 tracks, recorded with producer Tony Platt in London late last year – some of the tracks you may recognise from our live shows, some you won’t!
It’ll be available for pre-order on the Efpi shop and other retailers very soon (join our mailing list to be alerted when its available), but until then we’ve put up a track that you can listen to and download for free – just click here… Its called jazzwalk and is a new track named after the Street of Fame in Burghausen, where we won the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award last year, and features storming solos from Sam Healey on alto saxophone and Anton Hunter on guitar.
If the track whets your appetite to hear more, we’re kicking off a UK tour produced by Serious in a couple of weeks in Southampton, followed by album launch gigs in Manchester and London in February – its our first album, we’re allowed to have two launch parties! In the unlikely event you needed any extra encouragement to come along to any of those dates, the album will be on sale at those gigs in advance of the official March release date. Full details below…
28th January – Turner Sims, Southampton (details/tickets)
16th February – RNCM, Manchester (details/tickets)
20th February – Ronnie Scott’s, London (details/tickets)
24th March – The Sage, Gateshead (Gateshead International Jazz Festival) (details/tickets)
28th March – Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple (details/tickets)
Posted by on 13/01/2012 at 16:37 in gigs, news and tagged album, big ideas, tour. Leave comments here.
In our customary belated style let us be one of the last people to wish you a Happy New Year! The 3rd of January seems as good a time as any (?) to reflect on the past 12 months, an amazing year for us as a band – things that happened in the first few months of 2011 seem such a long time ago now and maybe thats because so much else has happened as the year went on!
In January we played our first gig of 2011 and our first gig at Ronnie Scott’s in London, a gig that we all really enjoyed and that seemed to go down well too… Then in March we were off to Germany (kindly supported by the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund) to compete in the final of the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award in Burghausen – which we won! This meant that we got a giant novelty cheque (below) and the honour of opening the Burghausen Jazzwoche, performing a full set before Chick Corea & Gary Burton in a concert that was recorded for TV and radio. We all had an amazing time in when we were over in Germany, check out some of the best photos here (or if you’re really keen, here’s the complete gallery from days 1, 2, 3 & 4).
The next major thing on the horizon for us was in June when we played a really special gig at Band on the Wall in Manchester that was recorded and released as an extremely limited edition live DVD in October. We’ve still got a few left – head on over to our shop to get your hands on one! Here’s one of the tracks:
Over the summer we played in Norwich, in a field in Cheshire, and had a great day at Mostly Jazz in Birmingham, and then in August we were invited back to Ronnie Scott’s for their annual celebration of all things British in a double bill with the amazing Kairos 4tet - again this was another brilliant night, with some really nice reviews!
At the beginning of November we were busy recording our debut full length album, which was a hectic few days to say the least… Its all come together nicely though, and will be out in February – more information to follow shortly! Here’s us all at the end of the session at Livingston Studios in London with producer Tony Platt and engineer Simone Filiali – more photos from the weekend in our gallery here and on our tumblr blog here.
Finally, we ended our year at the London Jazz Festival with an amazing gig at Kings Place which was a fantastic way to round off 2011! As for 2012, we’ve already announced some gigs at some lovely venues and as I’ve mentioned above, our album will be released in February – its already shaping up to be an exciting year. Thanks for your support in 2011 and we hope you enjoy what we’ve got lined up for you in 2012!
Posted by on 03/01/2012 at 10:22 in misc and tagged 2011, band on the wall, burghausen, dvd, germany, kings place, london jazz festival, recording, ronnie scott's. Leave comments here.
Merry Christmas! Here’s the Efpi Records Christmas Message which we filmed the other day in a Beats & Pieces festive gathering – ‘We Wish You An Atonal Christmas’…
Hope it gets you in the festive spirit!
Posted by on 24/12/2011 at 17:23 in misc. Leave comments here.
Really excited to announce our first set of dates in the UK in 2012 – in these first 5 dates we’ll be travelling the length of England from Southampton to Gateshead, with stops in Barnstaple, London and Manchester along the way. The Manchester and London gigs will also be launch events for our debut album (released in the same week as the gigs), both held at venues very close to our hearts…
Full list of 2012 dates (so far…) as follows:
28th January – Turner Sims, Southampton (details/tickets)
16th February – RNCM, Manchester (details/tickets)
20th February – Ronnie Scott’s, London (details/tickets)
24th March – The Sage, Gateshead (Gateshead International Jazz Festival) (details/tickets)
28th March – Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple (details/tickets)
More dates to be announced so keep an eye on our gigs page, and full details on the album release to follow very very soon…
Posted by on 13/12/2011 at 13:35 in gigs, news and tagged 2012, barnstaple, gateshead, gateshead international jazz festival, london, manchester, queen's theatre, rncm, ronnie scott's, sage, southampton, turner sims. Leave comments here.
There’s a really nice article about us and interview with me and Anton in the new Dec/Jan issue of Jazzwise, out now! Its written by the brilliant Chris Ackerley, who’s managed to make us sound a lot more eloquent than we actually are… The article is below but you’ll have to get your hands on a copy of the magazine to read it – you should be reading it anyway of course!
We were also picked out by Mike Chadwick of Jazz FM and Band on the Wall as one of the acts to look out for in 2012, cheers Mike! We certainly do have a lot planned for next year – there’s a clue elsewhere in the Jazzwise issue if you can find it but all will be revealed here in the next couple of days…
Posted by on 05/12/2011 at 12:17 in news and tagged chris ackerley, jazz fm, jazzwise, mike chadwick. Leave comments here.
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