The festival opens tonight with the stunning Pepa Molina, followed on Saturday by Los Arrieritos in the UK Premiere of ‘13 Rosas’, and a one off collaboration between UK tango ensemble El Ultimo Tango, vocalist Guillermo Rozenthuler and Pepa Molina closing the weekend on Sunday evening.

Performances begin at 7.30pm, with tickets available via the Town Hall Box Office website or via phone – +44 (0)121 780 3333, and also directly from the Town Hall before the performance (subject to availability).

Finally, join us on photo-sharing website Flickr – add your photos and images of the festival to our collection at the new Flamenco-Birmingham Flickr Group.

We look forward to welcoming you to Birmingham this weekend!

Photo by freddy

From The Times
September 29, 2007
Richard Morrison

Hall’s well
Birmingham’s revived Town Hall is a world-beater

After an 11-year closure and a £35million makeover, one of Britain’s great Classical buildings reopens for business this week. Or rather, for pure pleasure. It’s the Town Hall in Birmingham – that wonderful marble-pillared edifice that looks as if it has been uprooted from Nero’s Rome and plonked in central Brum as a perpetual reminder to the planners of Britain’s second city that architecture can be massive yet graceful, functional yet beautiful. Even its limestone is fascinating: you can still see fossils of animals and plants embedded in it.

It isn’t quite Roman, but it is venerable by Birmingham standards. Built in 1834 by Joseph Hansom (of hansom-cab fame) for musical performances and political debates, it is said to be the oldest surviving concert hall in Europe, predating by decades such illustrious 19th-century venues as the Royal Albert Hall and the Musikverein in Vienna. Dickens strutted his stuff here; so did Mrs Thatcher. More to the point, so did a host of musical luminaries, from Mendelssohn and Elgar (the former’s Elijahand the latter’s Dream of Gerontius were premiered here) to Count Basie, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

But when Simon Rattle persuaded Birmingham’s councillors to build Symphony Hall for the city’s reinvigorated orchestra, the Town Hall’s future looked bleak. It was closed on safety grounds in 1996, and even placed on English Heritage’s register of “buildings at risk”.

So how wonderful that, after a renovation largely paid for by Birmingham City Council and the lottery, its looks have been stunningly restored. The auditorium has been converted back to its single-balcony configuration, the 6,000-pipe organ has been spruced up, and a new acoustic canopy installed. The result is a breath-taking 1,100-seat hall that can house everything from pop and jazz to medium-sized orchestras.

That eclectic sweep is captured in the reopening festival. Thursday’s gala brings together gospel choirs and big bands for a revival of Quincy Jones’s exuberant reimagining of Handel’s Messiah. Next weekend the hall has an open day and a reggae carnival. Later the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the city’s top choir, Ex Cathedra, perform great Romantic pieces associated with the venue. And, with the stalls seats removed, the old place will be turned into Britain’s most elegant ballroom for a “day of dance for all” on October 9. There’s indie, folk and world music too, as well as an evening showcasing the talent in local schools.

I’m excited, and I don’t even live in the Midlands. But can Birmingham support two concert halls offering 600 events a year? Well, the good news is that they are being run as one venture by the Symphony Hall manager Andrew Jowett, one of the most astute impresarios in the business. The bad news is that classical concerts in the city haven’t always been too well attended since Rattle packed his bags for Berlin.

Now is surely the time for music-loving Brummies to get back in the groove. Coming from a city (ie, London) that can’t boast one world-class concert hall, I can only envy their luck in acquiring two.

We’re extremely proud to be presenting a weekend of world-class, cutting edge flamenco at the newly refurbished Town Hall this November, with Pepe Molina, Los Arrieritos and Ultimo Tango Fusión appearing between 9-11th November, alongside special workshops and taster sessions in guitar, dance and hand percussion, all part of our 2007 Flamenco Festival.

You can discover more about the performers and groups appearing on the Artists page of this site. We open Birmingham’s first flamenco season with an exciting preview gig at The Glee Club, featuring the dynamic young TG Collective, with special guest – the superb Birmingham-based dancer Ana Garcia.  Ana is also one of the co-directors of the Festival.

Thanks for your support!

Photo by studio.es