Firstly on Thursday 28th, a few of us will be down to attend the London Awards for Art and Performance 2011, for which we’ve been shortlisted for the Jazz Award. You may remember me asking for you all to support us in the first stage of this process on twitter and facebook, and you responded amazingly – thanks so much! We had the highest number of votes by a considerable margin, you’re all legends… Now its down to the panel of esteemed judges, and of course we’ll let you know what happens on Thursday via all the usual channels so keep those eyes peeled.

Then on Wednesday August 3rd we’ll be back at Ronnie Scott‘s in a double bill with the fantastic Kairos 4tet during the annual Brit Jazz Fest that celebrates the best jazz the country has to offer – and we can’t wait… Remember that our gig in January with Get the Blessing sold out and we wouldn’t want anybody to miss out again, so get your tickets in now from here and we’ll see you there!

Looking a bit further ahead, we’re really pleased and honoured to have been included in a series of events at Kings Place during the London Jazz Festival in November. The festival website describes the series as ‘five massively talented groups and leaders – a meeting place for artists from the USA and Europe whose music stretches and probes the boundaries of jazz’ and there’s some stellar names involved… We’ll be playing on Saturday 19th November following gigs over the preceding few days by Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, Robert Glasper, Gretchen Parlato and Rory Simmons’ Fringe Magnetic and we can’t wait! Tickets are already on sale, so again get em while they’re hot…

Adding to the excitement, here’s the poster design that you’ll shortly be seeing around and about Manchester, designed by Efpi Records‘ Artist in Residence Angela Guyton. I’ll buy a drink at the gig for the first person to tweet @beatsnpieces or facebook (here) a photo of one in the wild, so keep an eye out!

More details on the Band on the Wall website here – you can also get your advance tickets from there, bargain at only £7.50. If you’ll be there say hello on facebook too!

All of us in the band are really excited about this and we can’t wait! See you there…

1) Tonight (Tuesday) at Sandbar we’ve got Chris Mapp’s Gambol from Birmingham playing as part of the Freedom Principle series of gigs run by Efpi Records – 8.30pm, £3 which also gets you a discount at the bar…

2) Tomorrow (Wednesday) Polar Bear are bringing their new collaboration with MC Jyager to Sound Control, with support from our good friends Gogo Penguin – the Penguins are on about 8pm, tickets are £10 + booking

3) Friday 18th – Beats & Pieces Big Band (thats us!) at the West Didsbury Club, M20 2LN. Come and say bye to us as we head off to Germany at the weekend for the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award next week – its free entry, with cheap beer too: happy days… Our set starts 8.30pm so don’t be late!

See you down the front at all three of these gigs!

UPDATE: Fran Hardcastle from the always excellent LondonJazz blog was also at the gig – check out her review here.

UPDATE 2: So was The Guardian’s John Fordham – his review is online here or see below…

Excited about the Manchester Jazz Festival next month! Check out the youtube video above for a preview of what the festival is about, and keep an eye on the website at manchesterjazz.com in the next few days as the full lineup will be revealed very soon. Pleased to officially announce that we’ll be playing on the closing night of the festival on Saturday 31st July at the festival pavilion in Albert Square – this will be a bit of a party for us too as it will officially end our tour, back at the scene of our first ever gig at the festival only two years ago… See you there!

We’ll be playing in a big band double bill with the wonderful Alice Zawadzki who’ll be showing off her brand new 18 piece Sky Project, a collaboration with the equally wonderful Jo McCallum. You’ll also get to hear the exciting Sam Rapley/Adam Chatterton quartet.

The evening will be held at the West Didsbury Conservative Club, Burton Road, M20 2LN (map) and will begin at 8pm. Entry will be free, but we will be accepting donations if you enjoy the music!

See you there…

4/02/10 The Spin Off, Bar Santiago, Leeds

21/05/10 The Forge Venue, Camden

We’ll also be playing at the Marlborough Jazz Festival over the weekend of the 9th July – exact day to be confirmed but should be a good one!

Thought now would be an excellent time to recap all the stuff from the end of 2009 that I’ve been meaning to post, just to close everything off nicely. First of all, I’ve just uploaded a load of photos from the EP launch night on 2nd December to the gallery; the pictures were all taken by Martin Wilson and they’re really good so check them out now… I think that this one is my favourite.

Also it was my birthday just before Christmas, and wanted to share with you this picture of my amazing birthday cake – remind you of anything?? Thanks Lucy!

Thanks to everyone who came to the gig and especially to those who gave up their time and effort to play in the band – it was great to meet and play with you all! Hopefully it won’t be the last gig for the ensemble…

The gig was recorded but unfortunately the sound engineer’s recorder ran out of memory a couple of songs into the set… If I can salvage anything I’ll upload it soon!