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Brighton Jazz Festival Update – June 2012

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Hi everyone!  You may have noticed a distinct lack of updates here recently – this is because I’ve been trying to decide what to do.  After the crowdfunding initiative didn’t work out, I talked to the Arts Council and they were very keen that I apply and gave me a few great tips.

However it’s a 3 month, 8000 word application process for over £10,000 (which is the minimum the Jazz Festival would need) and due to my having been recently headhunted by an exciting startup digital media company in Brighton, I just haven’t been able to get around to doing it in time for 2012.

So I’m going to leave the site up so that you can add yourself to the mailing list, apply for the Arts Council funding for NEXT year, in September when my new role will have settled down a bit, and we will take it from there!

If you are interested in appearing at the Brighton Jazz Festival 2013, sponsoring us in any way, or being a venue for 2013, just add your name and email to the list and I’ll be in touch very soon.

Warm regards, Nicola

Brighton Jazz Festival Update | Week 9 | 31 Weeks To Go

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Oomph | Jazz Funk BandThis week I’ve talked to the very friendly and helpful Pete Lawrence, original founder of Cookin’ Vinyl Records and the hugely popular festival The Big Chill which ran for 18 years, gathering the respect of all, who is now working on a new festival and arts project called Pic-Nic Village.

Here’s a video of Pete talking about his new project at TedX Cardiff.  Although Pete didn’t succeed in raising all the money for Pic-Nic via crowdfunding he’s now working with Unbound.co.uk on crowdfunding his new book project The Big Chill & Other Al Fresco Stories (I’ve signed up for a signed 1st edition copy to add to my collection).  Read more about the crowdfunding part of this project here.

It was actually quite scary going public on a site like IndieGoGo, like hanging your ass out in public ready to be kicked!  But after the initial hesitation, I decided to go for it.  What’s the worst that can happen?  We raise a bit of money but not the whole lot, well, that’s a step closer to my dream, isn’t it?

I’ve been out and about quite a bit this week and interest is really growing in the Festival.  I was at the Brunswick Jazz Jam on Tuesday where Heather sang “Money Can’t Buy Me Love” and her friend Lynne sold an album on the spot!  She did a great job although she was tired having been singing Handel in London for 6 hours.  I think she sounded well warmed up rather than tired, as she did some great warbles and scatting (is that what it’s called?).  Actually, there were loads of great singers down there on Tuesday, sometimes you go weeks without any but word must be getting around again.

On Wednesday we ill-advisedly went out again (with Sarah’s daughter Chloe and her Two Door drummer boyfriend Ben Thompson, to the Casablanca Jazz Club to see the mighty Oomph! who were bloody marvellous, including in their line-up Rob Heaseman who is a Jazz Jam regular, that’s Rob on the far right in the pic above (click to enlarge).  They played everything from old Earth Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder through to really up to the minute stuff which I can’t remember because staying out till 3.30am does not help my aging memory any.  I was dancing to the point where my leggies hurt the next day!

Great excitement on Thursday as Heather’s album “At Last” started showing up on on Amazon, HMV, Virgin Media (where they have her down as Etta James!) and even Argos (classy!) but worryingly not iTunes yet, but apparently that gets updated every Sunday.

Friday was another night out at the new venue The Verdict.  Cafe by day, jazz club with baby grand piano by night!  This time it was Ben Castle and Mark Edwards, two of Heather’s great friends and an evening not to be missed.  Ben’s very quirky – I’m really looking forward to meeting him – and his website is possibly one of the most entertaining I’ve come across so far!  Here’s a video of Ben and Mark (and I notice Andy Cleyndert who recorded and produced Heather’s album) and Ben Sarfas from the band Oomph (see above and below). At the Brunswick. Of course!

Now you might think that all this going out is not actually moving the Festival forward a lot but actually it’s filling two roles.  One is getting me out and about networking (I met some great people including Edward the R&B singer/guitarist who comes to the Jazz Jam, the promoter of the Open Mic and the landlady of the Green Fiddler before we went to the Casablanca in an Open Mic night (have to ask Ben which pub that was!).

The other thing it’s doing is getting me into the habit of going out more, being more sociable, getting used to the different venues, pretty essential I feel!

More Info About Oomph!

Oomphf is a powerful, high energy funk/pop band fronted by highly sought-after Sammy Sarfas . The band is made up of some of the most talented musicians in Brighton and the South East. Between them they have played and recorded with an impressive list of artists (Jools Holland, Amy Winehouse, Roy Ayers, Alexander O’Neal, Alice Russell, De La Soul, Nitin Sawney, Viola Wills, Turin Brakes, The Mummers and Quantic Soul Orchestra to mention a few!)

This group of young, experienced musicians are regularly booked to play at weddings, parties, functions and clubs all over Brighton, the UK and Europe. The band mesmerise crowds with their high energy and showmanship. Outstanding vocals are performed by lead vocalist Sammy Sarfas backed up by a superb horn section with some blistering solos from Rob Heasman on Trumpet and Ben Sarfas on Saxophone. A band is only as good as its drummer and Tristan Banks, who was short listed for the Michael Jackson Tour, is one of the most exceptional and funkiest drummers in the UK. Combine Tristan with brilliant guitar, bass and keyboard players and you have one of the best backlines in Britain.

This band will give you the ‘Oomphf’ your party needs to keep your guests dancing and feeling funky all night long. If you would like to come and see OOMPHF play live, as our special guests, you can do so at Casablanca Jazz Club, Middle Street, Brighton, BN1 1AL where the band has a residency every Wednesday and twice a month at the weekend. Please contact Rob Heasman (details below) to receive the red carpet treatment and get guest list for you and your friends.

The band provides a full PA system and a high quality lighting package including top of the range Disco lighting and lasers as standard.

Contact Us
For more information or to book a band, contact us on:
Telephone: 07833 197142
Email: robstrumpet@hotmail.com

Heather Cairncross & Friends At The Brunswick Jazz Jam

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Heather Cairncross sings “Money Can’t Buy Me Love” at the Brunswick Jazz Jam in Hove.  The Jam is every Tuesday at 8pm and they have half price food throughout March & April.

Heather is joined by Wayne McConnell on piano, Eddie Myers on bass, Paul Richards on guitar and Adrian on drums (do get in touch Adrian to give us your surname!)

 

Crowdfunding The 1st Brighton Jazz Festival

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CrowdfundingThis last week, I ventured into the world of Crowdfunding via IndieGoGo to try and raise the dosh needed for the Brighton Jazz Festival to put on a great headline act, pay for the PR and provide a cash prize and trophy for the winner of the “New Jazz Composition” competition.

I first heard about Crowdfunding via Judith Morgan back in the Money Gym days, when we were considering taking in investment to grow the business. We much preferred the idea of going to our subcribers and clients and giving them some great “perks” as it’s called when you contribute / invest and get something cool in return. She’s following a similar and very interesting business model with her Entrepreneur Soul project now and it’s shaping up very nicely.

Poker players often “crowdfund” via private investors, to raise the entry money and stake for a big tournament. Racehorses are often owned by consortiums of wealthy individuals. Of course, startup businesses are funded by groups of angel investors, but crowdfunding sites make it more accessible for ordinary people to invest or raise money, often for creative projects like albums, films and promotional videos. Browsing the success stories on the sites is heart-warming (and a big time suck!).

Since then, one of my clients has mentioned one of her clients, The Barefoot Doctor (who interviewed me on money & abundance thinking once), who is now working with ex-Dragon Rachel Elnaugh on a crowdfunded project called The Big Om, planned for the O2 arena in December this year.

Then, thanks to one of my many wonderful mentoring clients, Content Strategist Jane P Lewis, I’ve also talked this week to the very friendly and helpful Pete Lawrence, original founder of Cookin’ Vinyl Records and the hugely popular festival The Big Chill, who is now working on a new festival and arts project called Pic-Nic Village. Pete told me that, although Pic-Nic didn’t succeed in raising the whole amount they were going for via crowdfunding – £750,000 – he thought if I tried a smaller amount it might work! Here’s a video of Pete talking about his new project at TedX Cardiff.

There are sites who let you do your crowdfunding in stages but I’m short of time because, if I’m going to book my desired headline act for one of the Saturdays of the Festival, I need to do it soon.

Most of the crowdfunding sites work on an “all or nothing” basis and I wasn’t interested in all my hard work (because I knew it would be hard work to promote it to the point of getting any investment) going to waste if I was even £1 off my target.

Some crowdfunding sites focus on the UK, some on the US, some are international and some crowdfunding has a business bias while some work exclusively in a niche like Unbound.co.uk – who are working with Pete Lawrence on crowdfunding his new book project The Big Chill & Other Al Fresco Stories (I’ve signed up for a signed 1st edition copy to add to my collection).

I chose the IndieGoGo site because

  • It seemed to be one of the biggest internationally, apart from Kickstart.com which helped the Philadelphia Center City Jazz Festival raise $16,000 recently. That’s what got me started on the idea actually, hearing that, although I had been thinking about it before. I’m also going to seek private sponsorship but I can just send them to the site now to contribute and any sponsor will get an extra benefit by being listed on there as it’s very public.
  • They also have thousands of Twitter followers where all the other sites only have a couple of thousand at best. Now, that’s interesting isn’t it? I obviously want to go with the site that will get me the most exposure.
  • They consider featuring you if you create a lot of activity and I’m hoping to get some of that. But they are all at SXSW right now – South By South West – which is where I first heard about Twitter back in 2007. That made me feel good too as all the best companies attend SXSW – it’s one of my life goals to go there too, one day.

So what next? I suppose I share as much as possible and then wait until someone other than me gets their credit card or PayPal out!

Brighton Jazz Festival Update | Week 8 | 32 Weeks To Go

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It’s been a lively old week online with our new Guest Artistic Director for Jazz Dance Jeff Daniels getting stuck in sharing some great stuff, ranging from music to art, on our Facebook Page and new Social Media Manager Sarah stirring up both our Twitter timeline and Facebook Page.  This, according to our Facebook page statistics, is our most popular week to date, with the most Likes and people talking about the page to date.

I’ll have to get Sarah to do a guest blog post about her strategy for the Social Media for the Festival sometime – would that be of interest?  Use the comments box to let me know.

Friday night Sarah and I went to see Jeff spin at the Fishbowl and had a great night, meeting DJ Ally Smith, DJ Gareth Stephens and dj/producer Richie Phoe.  Stumbling out of the pub at 1.30 in the morning was a bit of a shock as I haven’t been out that late for a while and certainly not in Brighton town centre on a Friday.  People everywhere and most of them ver’ ver’ drunk!  Still, the hourly night bus from Brighton to Shoreham got us home safely and the female bus driver was not only strict but really funny with her yobbo put-downs!

On the organisational front, I’ve talked briefly to Julian Caddy of the Brighton Fringe (by email) who has indicated he would be open to the idea of licensing us the use of their highly efficient ticketing system, because why re-invent the wheel eh? People keep telling me about another ticketing system as used by The Brunswick so I’ll ask them about that tonight when we go to check the strength of the broadband signal to make sure it’s up to the job of streaming my other sister Heather’s debut jazz album launch party on Ustream in a couple of weeks time.

I had a long talk with Andy at The Brunwick and have got a much clearer handle on how the whole Fringe thing works for the venues, which means that it’s just as well that I haven’t been calling them and putting my foot in it.  I must learn to trust my intuition more.  I’m an action taker but when I get the feeling I should hold back, perhaps I should take notice.

Lots of musicians are asking me how they can get involved in the Fringe and it’s about time I got the registration page live.  Many of them think that it’s going to be a curated Festival like the London Jazz Festival I think, rather than an “anything goes” like the Fringe.

However, after registration, the logical thing would be to be jumped to a page where the musicians can find out which venues are offering vacant nights so that really has to be my next job.  I bloomin’ hate using the telephone but I think just sitting down and allocating a day to do it, would be the best thing.   Then I can follow up with an email asking them to confirm dates and facilities.

Snowboy’s History Of Jazz Dance In The UK

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“In another lifetime, I walked into the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town through a portal into a new world: the cavernous dancehall was packed, and the “audience” being choreographed by cross-rhythms of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian ancestry in an atmosphere created by a 17-year-old jazz funk DJ called Gilles Peterson. I was witnessing the dawn of the New Jazz Age.

The mostly black dancers wore baggy suits, white shirts and braces like the 1930s jivers at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, the Forties mambo-niks at Manhattan’s legendary Palladium Ballroom, and hats like the Jamaican rude boys in (London) Soho’s basements documented by the then newspaper snapper, Ken Russell. It resembled a period-piece film-set and their improvised performances, balletic spins and feet blurred like a tap-dancer’s, were breathtakingly new and exciting.

Upstairs, in a small room packed like Coney Island beach, another crowd danced to different tunes, chosen for their dominant Latin genes: Azymuth’s samba-fusions, Dizzy Gillespie’s Cubop loaded with Chano Pozo’s ancient conga rhythms, and Herbie Hancock’s disco-funk. The peacock dancers were now driven by a tall, chain-smoking, pale man – the legend of the era, DJ Paul Murphy. For the first time, black youth were the focus of white kids who absorbed their moves, memorised and then imitated their gymnastic spins and rolls and a physical syntax anticipating New York’s imminent hiphop explosion.

So that was my entrée to the UK’s unique jazz dance scene which would become part of my life. It drove me too, to the decks and to obsessive vinyl collecting – on the Latin side. Thirty years later a former Essex soul boy, Mark Cotgrove, has self-published a documentary of the era based on over 250 interviews with the movers and makers of the scene: DJs, jazz dancers, radio presenters, collectors and fans. The result is an important social and cultural documentary…..

Read More Here >>>

Thanks to our Jazz Dance Artistic Director Jeff Daniels for sharing this!

Brighton Jazz Festival Update | Week 7 | 33 Weeks To Go

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Well, it’s been a busy week in the life of the Brighton Jazz Festival.  Here are the highlights:

New Brighton Jazz Venues

I was talking to Midnight PR this week and they alerted me to two new jazz venues to add to my list of “venues to talk to” opened in Brighton this week, the first being Bohemia, described as a Grand Café & Late Lounge, located in Meeting House Lane apparently.

The second is The Verdict, described as a custom built Jazz Club that turns into a café in the daytime, which is up near the Law Courts at 159 Edward St.  Jim Whyte played drums on the opening night and he liked it a lot!

“New Jazz Composition” Competition

Famous film & jazz composer and Brighton resident John Altman has agreed – from Hollywood no less – to judge this brand new competition to find the best new jazz music for us, I’m meeting up with him in March when he returns from the USA to iron out the details.  He also wants his band to perform in the Festival which will be awesome!

Guest Artistic Directors

Sarah Cairncross, who is handling the Social Media for the Festival introduced me to well known DJ Jeff Daniels this week who, after a few hours of us swapping hundreds of names from our London house music past (I used to manage producers and run Esoteric Records with my ex), has kindly agreed to be the Guest Artist Director for the jazz influenced dance side of the Festival.

He’s going to talk to the players on the UK jazz dance scene, dj’s, dancers, venues and artists with a view to them getting involved in the Festival too and when we were talking the other night we simultaneously had a great idea for a great headline act who straddles the dance, soul, jazz and hip hop worlds beautifully, winning the respect of all.  Watch this space.

Jeff’s also got a great idea for another fund-raiser for the Festival apart from the book I’m writing and I’m very excited about that.

I’m very keen that we include jazz influenced dance music and jazz fusion along with jazzy soulful vibes as they all particular favourites of mine and actually dance music introduced me to many new jazz artists.  So many dj’s, artists and musicans cross over, like Roy Ayres and Herbie Hancock, Nu Yorican Soul, Jill Scott, Arrested Development, Gilles Peterson (pictured right), Paul Clark, Russ Dewbury, Joe Sample, and even Stevie Wonder, who is not strictly jazz, but who is headlining at the Java Jazz Festival in Jakarta shortly.

And Jazzwise magazine have just broken the news that the “Mostly Jazz” festival is about to get an injection of funk and soul too so we are not the only ones!

New Sponsors

WordPress Expert Steve Watson has agreed to come on board to help Cairncross Media with the website – particularly with the design side of things – as it’s all getting a bit busy now, along with our usual work of creating “websites that work” not just look pretty and mentoring business clients who want to learn how to do their own internet marketing.

Brilliant ex-chef Steve was one of Nicola’s partners in The Money Gym having run her boutique hotel The Acacia for her, and previously managed the late lamented Pepper Tree restaurant in Worthing and before that the VIP dining rooms at AstraZeneca.  He brings a natural design sense to all his websites that we can only attribute to his years of practice creating divine looking – and tasting – food!

Steve has a wide range of business clients, both locally and internationally and is also helping one of Heather Cairncross’ mates Joe Walters with a website for a project called Songbound to help hundreds of Indian kids gain a sense of purpose and self worth through singing in choirs and going on to perform in concerts with international musicians.

Joe was involved in the creation of the documentary film “The Sound Of Mumbai – A Musical” that has just been acquired by HBO and is about to be shown globally.  You can see a bit of the film here on Channel 4 On Demand.

Headline Acts

When I added Stevie Wonder to the poll we have been running on the Facebook page as to who YOU would like to see headline the Festival on the two Saturdays, Stevie stirred up a bit of controversy about whether he can be called Jazz, which is great because it gets people talking.  Herbie Hancock is just beating Stevie to top favourite right now, with Roy Ayres and Stacey Kent coming up hard behind.

Desert island Jazz

We’ve also been asking the impossible question “if you had to take just ONE jazz album to a desert island which one would it be and why?” and the howls of protest at having to choose just one are reverberating about Brighton.

Jazz drummer @JimWhyte shares his “Desert Island Jazz” album here  – why not tell us yours?  It will get you featured on the page with a link to your website.  Just come and “like” the Facebook page, then post your favourite album on the Wall, with a short description of “why” ideally with a link to a YouTube video. Don’t forget to share your website address too, so I can add a link.

As I say, a busy week, and it’s only going to get more so!  Exciting though.

Brighton Jazz Festival Update | Week 6 | 34 Weeks To Go

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After my rather stuck week last week, I spoke to Serious Music this week, about both the Brighton Jazz Festival and getting Heather on at the London Jazz Festival.  They were very helpful and have passed her album onto the people who put the programme together.  I was really angling for someone there to consider mentoring me through my first Festival in Brighton but, not surprisingly, they declined 8-)

I also made contact with Jeff Bradley from Christchurch, New Zealand, as I picked up on Twitter that he was thinking of starting a jazz festival in his new home town of Methven, NZ.  I thought it might be nice to swap notes as we go but he’s decided now that a jazz pub/club might be a bit more realistic to start with, as Methven NZ only has 1200 inhabitants and the South Island has no jazz club at all.  We’ve had a couple of nice email chats though and we are going to keep in touch.

I knew having coffee with Dan Thompson would do the trick on getting me unblocked and re-inspired.  I’ve been up-visioned and had my bum thoroughly booted, having Sarah along helped too as they fired off each other.

Arts Mentoring

Dan’s agreed to mentor me, so I’ve got someone to be accountable too, which will be good.

Dan’s name has most recently become known for founding the #RiotCleanUp twitter campaign which has thrown him into the national limelight but he’s a veteran of organising arts based events and securing any funding possible.  His forthright manner means that he’s upset a few people in the past but we’ve always got along really well (I like direct!) since Sarah introduced him to me back in 2003 or so.

Social Media Sponsorshop

Sarah’s agreed to help with the Social Media side of the Festival, which I’m delighted about because while I’m no slouch at SM, it’s very time consuming to do it well and she can now add the Festival to her rapidly expanding Social Media Management client list.

Two of the ideas that came out of today were part of the overall plan to expand my original vision of a few local jazz acts playing in a few local jazz venues and I’m feeling very inspired.

Dan suggested we try and secure funding or sponsorship to enable the Festival to commission a new jazz composition and I knew immediately who I could ask to do that, if we could, as I met a very famous jazz & film composer at the Brunswick Jazz Jam the other week.

In the car on the way home, I thought of making that even bigger to become an annual “New Jazz Composition” competition as I know people like Dave Drake are writing their own stuff all the time, having heard him live at the Brunswick recently.  Then this famous person could perhaps judge the competition?  Cash prize and a trophy, while the finalists could perform on the last Saturday of the Festival leading up to the main Headline act.

Headline Acts

I don’t have any main headline acts yet but as the ideas to make the Festival more exciting are coming, it’s getting more attractive for PR purposes and that will make sponsorship / grants easier to pay for 2 x Headline acts!  We ideally want two, one on each of the Saturdays.

I’ve put up a question on the Facebook Page to get folks to vote for, and suggest acts that they would like to see headlining.  My niece is going out with the drummer on a major pop act at the moment and he’s really cool, he’s has said he will help me with introductions if he can, once I decide who I want.

My vote would go to Herbie Hancock or Stevie Wonder as Stevie’s Innervisions album turned me onto black music generally and jazzy soul music particularly (could Stevie technically be called Jazz?).  Herbie was one of the first ever jazz funk concerts I went to at the Brighton Centre, along with Brass Construction, Ohio Players, Earth Wind & Fire and Parliament.  Good times, the 70′s.

Brighton Jazz Festival Logo

We need a new logo urgently so I’m going to abandon the competition idea as we have not had any entries and the website looks rubbish but we are getting traffic from around the world now so I need one quick.  I’ve asked a really great local graphic designer who love the jazz scene like I do, if he’ll help, for this year at least.

Ideally the logo / blog header should encompass the fact that I want to be more inclusive – bring in jazz dance, jazz funk, jazz soul etc.

Other thoughts

The other idea was that of having guest jazz bloggers / album reviews and while I’d already thought of interviewing the founders of other jazz festivals, Dan suggested widening that to interviewing jazz musicians generally.  I know that Wayne McDonnall is already doing that as part of his Brighton Jazz School podcast so I might ask Wayne if I can use the edited interview bits as blog posts and link back to his podcast.  Not sure if that’s possible…but one can only ask.

I’m on fire baby!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-26

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My Timing Stinks! 50% Less Music Festival Goers In 2012?

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Well apparently I could have chosen a better year to start a music festival! Music Week reports: New research from YouGov, the SixthSense Music Festivals report, has suggested that just 29% of previous festival goers plan on going to a music festival this year, while 50% say that they ‘don’t expect to go to a festival in 2012’.

The report suggests that festival attendance for 2012 will pale in comparison to figures for 2011. Of UK festival-goers (those who have attended a festival at least once in the past) over half (51%) said they had been to a UK music festival in the past 12 months.

Read More Here >>>

photo credit: Caesar Sebastian via photopin cc