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.
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.
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.
Its been a really busy but really exciting time at Beats & Pieces HQ – lots more info to come in the next few days so keep an eye out… Here’s just a few little things though that I wanted to let you know about before the big news drops!
Firstly massive thanks to everyone who came to our London Jazz Festival gig at Kings Place – we had a great time and it was really nice to see so many people there! It was also cool for us to speak to a lot of people in the interval and in the bar after the gig, you’re all lovely… I said this on stage on the night but massive thanks again to everyone at Serious and the London Jazz Festival, as well as to everyone at Kings Place for having us. The picture below (taken by Ben Watte) is our drummer Fin getting a bit excited in soundcheck…
Secondly, you can now purchase our Live @ Band on the Wall DVD through our online shop – just in time for Christmas… They’re priced at £8 + postage which also includes a digital download of the audio tracks and a PDF photo album from the night. We’ve also updated our remixes EP with a brand new remix of yafw (part iii) by our very own Nick Walters – he’s not used his own awesome solo but its still amazing work! The eagle eyed amongst you may notice that our 2009 EP is no longer available to download – this is in preparation for the release of our debut album early next year, as I said above there’ll be more details to come in the next few days…
Posted by on 29/11/2011 at 13:22 in news and tagged band on the wall, dvd, kings place, london jazz festival, nick walters, remixes, shop. Leave comments here.
Ahead of our gig at Kings Place during the London Jazz Festival next weekend (tickets here!) we’re running a competition to win one of 14 copies of our extremely limited edition Live @ Band on the Wall DVDs, signed and dedicated to you by a member of the band!
Full details are below in the customary smaller print but basically all you need to do to enter is send an email with your name and postal address (so we can send the DVD to you if you win) to dvdcompetition@beatsnpieces.net before 1200 GMT on Saturday 19th November. After our soundcheck at Kings Place in the afternoon, each band member will pick an entry at random and then sign a copy of the DVD with a personal message…
Here’s a track from the DVD to whet your appetite – don’t forget that only 200 of these will ever be sold, so if you want to guarantee yourself a copy make sure you get down to Kings Place next weekend and get hold of one! Good luck…
Posted by on 13/11/2011 at 10:56 in news and tagged band on the wall, competition, dvd. Leave comments here.
This time last week we were just finishing up the first day of three recording for our first album, due out early next year… Check out some pictures from the session by a few of the guys in the band on our brand new tumblr page at beatsnpiecesbigband.tumblr.com – we’ll also be using the page in the future to post some of the stuff that happens during rehearsals, soundchecks and backstage during gigs so be sure to keep an eye on it!
Thanks to everyone at Livingston Studios in London for having us for the session, and to the marvellous Tony Platt who produced the recording with us. Details regarding the album release coming soon…
Posted by on 11/11/2011 at 20:17 in news and tagged album, livingston, recording, tumblr. Leave comments here.
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