Everyday Jazz Journeys - Everday Journeys

This project features photographs and musicians’ quotes from a collaborative pilot research project called Everyday Jazz Life: A photographic project on contemporary jazz musicians’ lives in Birmingham. The project brought together jazz scholar, Dr Pedro Cravinho and freelance jazz photographer Brian Homer, and took place at Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR), Birmingham City University (BCU).

Brian Homer photographed by Pedro Cravinho

The Project

Everyday Jazz Life reveals some of the challenges and constraints that local jazz musicians face in developing their musical careers. The participants were saxophonists Chris Young, Joey Walter, Alicia Gardener-Trejo and Xhosa Cole (BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year 2018), pianist David Austin Grey and violinist and vocalist Ruth Angell. Once we had got the agreement of the participants semi-structured interviews were conducted by Cravinho. This was followed by several individual photographic sessions by Homer with each musician in response to the interviews. Each of the musicians interviewed and photographed for the project have their own jazz journey and each has a page with a short bio and three photographs which each have a quote taken from the interview. The quotes are taken from the interviews to complement Homer’s photography of the six musicians.

Dr Pedro Cravinho interviewing Joey Walter at the Mac Birmingham, photograph by Brian Homer.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to all the participants in Everyday Jazz Life. Brian would like to thank Valerie Jenner for her support. Pedro would like to thank Carla and Gonçalo for their support of his adventure in researching Jazz in Birmingham over the last few years. We would also like to acknowledge the support of our colleagues in the BCMCR Jazz Cluster. In addition thanks to The Flash Centre, Birmingham.

Project Funded by: BCU, Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Research Investment Scheme

Read the musician's stories

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Chris Young