Jazz 1080
How easy was it to create a seamless and professional music performance show in 1960s? Birmingham City University decided to find out by recreating the BBC Two’s ‘Jazz 625’ programme in as much technical accuracy as possible.
A golden era of music television has been faithfully recreated at Birmingham City University, as part of a major new research project looking at jazz broadcasting in the 1960s.
As well as encompassing archival research and interviews with former production staff, the study involved transforming the University’s main TV studio to simulate how a jazz programme was made. This included scrutinising the technical decisions faced by television crews and improvising musicians at each stage of producing such a broadcast.
Following months of planning, on Tuesday 22 May, Birmingham City University’s TV Studio A was transformed to evoke the aesthetics of a 1960s BBC jazz programme. Led by director Mark Kershaw, and featuring a crew of former BBC employees and current Birmingham City University students, the team utilised cutting edge facilities in the University’s £62 million Parkside Building to precisely record the role of improvisation in the relationship between a television crew, their equipment and a contemporary working jazz group.
In a loving homage to the legendary BBC jazz concert show, ‘Jazz 625’ – so titled because the newly launched BBC Two was broadcasting on 625-UHF lines (the HD of the time) – the Birmingham City University production has been named ‘Jazz 1080’, reflecting the technological leap in broadcasting since the 1960s. In order to realise this modern incarnation, the researchers and crew worked from original documentation sourced from the BBC Written Archive in Caversham.
Presented by Birmingham rapper Juice Aleem, the 50-minute programme featured performances by rising stars from the West Midlands jazz scene. Xhosa Cole (tenor saxophone), Lee Griffiths (alto saxophone), James Owston (double bass), Euan Palmer (drums) and Eyituoyo Awala (piano) – known as The Xhosa Cole Quintet – treated the studio audience to classic works by renowned artists such as Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard and Dizzy Gillespie.
“Nothing prepares you for the intensity of the production gallery during a live shoot, as your director guides the cameras around musicians in complex choreography. When you’re recording this way, as live in the manner of ‘Jazz 625’, the crew are improvising with as much dexterity and imagination as the musicians.” Dr Nicolas Pillai, co-lead of the Jazz Research cluster in Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University.
www.bcu.ac.uk/news-events/news/jazz-1080
Photo by Ian Davies
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