• Brilliant Corners 2023: A Festival of Jazz in Belfast

    February 8, 2023 - By 

    Belfast’s finest annual jazz event is back this March for its eleventh outing, courtesy of the perennially-reliable Moving On Music. This year’s Brilliant Corners festival features thirteen concerts – and two free events – across nine days from March 2nd-11th set predominately in the Black Box and Accidental Theatre. As ever, the programming will appeal to all manner of audiences, from the pure experimentalism of Belfast’s monthly Handmade Music, to the futuristic, urgent eclecticism of Run Logan Run and Sarathy Korwar, to rising masters of pure jazz like Binker Golding and Fergus McCreadie. The full schedule for Brilliant Corners is as follows – with each concert set to begin within 20 minutes of door times: Thursday 2 March…

  • Where Pathways Meet

    November 1, 2022 - By 

    Named after the 1978 Sun Ra classic, Where Pathways Meet is an unmissable two-day conference and showcase, hosted by the Jazz Promotion Network in association with Moving on Music and Improvised Music Company. Taking over Belfast’s venues, The MAC and Black Box across 3rd-4th November, it will unite a stellar cross-section of UK and Irish jazz artists, movers and shakers, to explore the most important issues and topics in contemporary jazz. Featuring a range of speakers from across the jazz sector, the conference range of topics, with panels featuring musicians, educators, promoters, agents and managers from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland and…

  • Pete and Jamie, Jamie and Pete

    February 3, 2021 - By 

    On Thursday, 14th January 2021, Jamie WhatsApped me with a private Soundcloud link and message that read, “Very sneak peek at Pete’s solo record. Just finished producing and mixing last night”. I was doing something, probably footering about with the Air Fryer I got for Christmas, so I didn’t listen to it. I didn’t listen to it the next day either. Or the day after. 3 days it lay in my phone, falling down the WhatsApp chat list with every new message that came in. Then I remembered, and stuck it on. It is – and I’m not being excessive…

  • Moving on Music Launches Middle Aisle Music Agency and Development Project

    January 14, 2021 - By 

    One of the country’s most reliable promoters, Belfast’s Moving On Music have today launched a new music agency and development project. Working with a selection of folk, jazz, classic, trad and ‘other’ music from these shores, the aim of Middle Aisle is to “support and develop a selection of artists, introduce more ears to incredible music, and help musicians move forward in their careers.” Already, the initiative has added Arborist, Bairie, Blue Whale, Cahal Masterson, Gráinne Meyer, Jack Joseph James, Jack Warnock, Junk Drawer, Laytha, Réalta with Myles McCormack, Robocobra Quartet, Ruth McGinley, Scott Flanigan Trio, and TRÚ to its roster. Fair payment,…

  • Moving On Music Set To Hold Online Concert Event ‘All The Noels’

    October 20, 2020 - By 

    Belfast-based tastemakers par excellence Moving on Music are set to hold unique online live music experience held throughout the Black Box, Belfast, titled All The Noels. The 30-odd-minute single shot, walk-through experience is set to showcase different music taking place across the various spaces of the venue. The video – recorded across one day by a team of audio-visual professionals – attempts to capture the feeling of being in possibly our favourite Belfast venue for live music. Performances come from some of TTA faves, experimental rock quartet Blue Whale, traditional Irish vocal quartet Landless, Irish jazz pianist Scott Flanigan‘s Trio, jazz drummer Steve Davis, folk duo Laytha and traditional flute & whistle player Martha Guiney with Shane McCartan. Speaking of the project, Mick Bonner of Moving on Music said “it was…

  • Moving On Music and Improvised Music Company Announce BAN BAM Female-led Creative Initiative

    August 7, 2020 - By 

    Moving on Music and Improvised Music Company have announced a 2020/2021 BAN BAM creative commissioning and career development opportunity to all Irish-born or resident female and gender-minority music-makers across the island of Ireland working in jazz and improvised music. This follows IMC’s similar 2017/18 programme and MOM’s succession of emerging artist programmes, both of which have elevated many of our favourite Irish acts. Available across jazz and creative music, three composers will be selected, each receiving a €2500 commission fee to compose for duo, trio or quartet. The composition period will be followed by 12 months of bespoke creative and career development support and consultation from both organisations,…

  • Brilliant Corners 2020

    February 20, 2020 - By 

    A remarkably consistent, ever-rewarding peak of the Irish festival calendar over the last eight years, Brilliant Corners can lay claim to being the island’s most carefully-curated jazz festival. Packing out (all being well) a mélange of Belfast’s finest venues and bars – both big and small – from February 27 to March 8, this year’s bill is a suitably essential affair. Curated, as ever, by the clued-in heads at Moving on Music, acts and events as mottled as the Mercury Prize-nominated Dinosaur, Athens, Georgia trailblazers Kenosha Kid, the always compelling Joseph Leighton Quartet, Wood River and the downright unmissable Parker/Niblock/Sanders will take over the likes…

  • Preview: Matmos @ Sonic Lab, Belfast

    May 29, 2019 - By 

    Few modern outfits have collaborated and flaunted convention quite as abundantly (or consistently) as Matmos. The San Francisco experimental electronic duo, aka M.C Schmidt and Drew Daniel, have spent the last three decades banging heads together – as well as lining up with the likes of Terry Riley, The Kronos Quartet, David Tibet, the Rachel’s, Lesser, Wobbly, Zeena Parkins, and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra – to carve out an increasingly singular sonic trajectory. At the heart of the duo’s implicit manifesto is a uniquely curveballing and reliably curious M.O: from sampling everything from freshly-cut hair and washing machines to an array of plastic objects, to…

  • Preview: Robocobra Quartet & Meltybrains? @ Black Box, Belfast

    May 6, 2019 - By 

    Two of the island’s most unclassifiable and artistically uncompromising – not to mention finest live acts – are set to play a double-headliner at Belfast’s Black Box on Friday, May 17 in what looks to be a contender for Irish Gig Of The Year. Proudly co-presented by Moving On Music and yours truly, it’s the first hometown headline show of the year for Robocobra Quartet, and the first Northern show in years for experimental  Meltybrains?. Perpetually a band of contradictions, we’ve long been one of Robocobra Quartet’s most ardent voices of praise. Their string of EPs and NI Music Prize-nominated pair of LPs – 2016 debut Music For All Occasions and Plays…