Jazz breaking news: Gil Evans Centenary marked by a Birmingham Town Hall performance of Birth of the Cool
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Gil Evans Season in Birmingham is the first opportunity to get a handle on how contemporary bandleaders and composers are dealing with the legacy of Gil Evans, the composer and arranger forever known for his collaborations with Miles Davis, in this the centenary year of Evans' birth.
The centenary, which falls in May, is an important chance to reassess the great Canadian’s music and life. With the benefit of the calm distance of historical perspective his work besides Miles encompasses landmark albums such as Svengali as well as his insightful interpretations of the music of Jimi Hendrix that more than last the test of time, and have become an indelible part of jazz history, Evans' music inspiring more recent composers such as Maria Schneider and Colin Towns to build on his achievements with ideas of their own.
Former Acoustic Ladyland leader, the saxophonist and composer Pete Wareham, begins the centenary season at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham next Wednesday (25 January) appearing at the Kings Heath pub venue with Mica Levi, the cult singer-songwriter better known as Micachu, whose shape shifting experimental outlook has seen her work with, among other jazz people, Wareham’s erstwhile Ladyland drummer and collaborator in Polar Bear, Seb Rochford. It’s £5 to get in. 
Stephen Poliakoff film composer and heavyweight-associate of the likes of guitarist Bill Frisell, the composer Mike Gibbs, rolls up for the second gig of the Gil Evans Season three days later, this time at the CBSO Centre on 28 January with the Hans Koller Ensemble, a 12-piece outfit that features such Birmingham leading lights as Koller on piano, who also holds down a main teaching and mentoring role at the Birmingham Conservatoire, trumpeter Percy Pursglove director of the avant-garde Harmonic festival in the city, plus two Americans who live in the UK: Mike Janisch on bass, and the Lee Konitz-linked Jeff Williams on drums. The Konitz connection just a small degree of separation from Birth of the Cool, the K2 among many peaks of Evans’ work with Miles. Birth of the Cool itself is then performed by the specially enlarged Birmingham Conservatoire Jazz Orchestra on 24 February at the Town Hall with Pursglove the featured soloist.
– Stephen Graham
For ticket info go to www.birminghamjazz.co.uk
Pictured Gil Evans (above left), and Pete Wareham (photo: Tim Dickeson)
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