If you like whats on the video, you can hear the rest of the album (and purchase the CD or mp3 download) here.

Really pleased to announce that we’ve been nominated for not one but two prestigious jazz awards! Firstly we are up for Ensemble of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, ‘Britain’s premier awards for the Jazz loving public and Jazz fans in both Houses’. 1864 members of the public submitted entries for the awards online, and then the shortlist was voted on by the Selection Panel who represent a broad cross-section of backgrounds united in their endeavour for their love and knowledge of jazz. The winners are chosen by judging members of the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group in Parliament and are announced on May 16th – we’ll keep you informed… Congratulations to all the other nominees!

We’ve also been nominated for the second year running for the London Jazz Awards, part of the London Awards for Art and Performance. Last year you were all amazing, showing your support for us by voting online and you can vote again this year, although it doesn’t influence the judging itself – online votes just give the judges a nudge in the right direction… You can vote here, thanks in advance for your help and thanks for your support thats enabled us to be nominated in the first place!

Its been a long time coming but we’re all really excited that our debut album Big Ideas is available NOW! You can listen, download and buy from the Efpi online shop or the CD and download is available from most of the usual places (Amazon, iTunes, HMV etc) – although if you order directly from us you receive a free Big Ideas badge, which I’m told is the hip new fashion accessory for the season…

Check out the whole album below and let us know what you think! You can tweet us @beatsnpieces and/or use the hashtag #BigIdeas, or you could write on our facebook wall.

We’re all really proud of what we’ve achieved since our first ever rehearsal just over 4 years ago that has culminated in the release of this album. Thanks so much to you all for your support and we really hope you enjoy our Big Ideas.

There will also be a couple of tracks from Big Ideas played on Helen Mayhew‘s Jazz FM show later this afternoon from 1pm along with a short chat with me about the band and the new album – again this will be available on demand via the link above should you miss the live broadcast.

Finally we were all really pleased to read some really amazing reviews of the Big Ideas launch show at Ronnie Scott’s earlier in the week – thanks once again to everyone for selling out the place and making it such a special night! Check out the Serious blog for a full roundup of everything. Below is a picture of Nick who was already pretty excited about the evening’s gig even before our soundcheck! (picture taken by Owen Bryce)

Here’s some photos from the RNCM gig and soundcheck taken by Peter Fay – there’s plenty more on our photos page. I’ll put up some stuff from the Ronnie’s gig over the next few days when I’ve had chance to recover… But thanks once again for being so good to us!

As an extra bonus for early birds, if you pre-order the CD the postage will be FREE (normally £1 UK, £2 rest of world) and you’ll also receive an exclusive Big Ideas badge (below) to sweeten the deal even more. We’ll also all sign a handful of the CDs and randomly put them in envelopes so you might get one of those! If you’d prefer a copy without our scrawls though make sure you drop us a line… We’ll try to write neatly though, we promise.

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)

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…

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…