TG Collective

Album Release + Spring Dates 2012

Sam — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:54:08 +0000

The Penguins Are Here!

After years of waddling around the polar ice packs of South Birmingham, we thought it was about time to carry out our annual threat to release a new album. So we’re very very happy to bring word that our new album (and first as TG Collective) – Release The Penguins – will be, err, released on May 28th, distributed in the UK by Proper Distribution. You can listen to the title track below, with the cover artwork by the splendid paper-cutting artist Suzy Taylor. You can also pre-order from Amazon here.

We’ll be posting links for pre-orders and downloads through Amazon, iTunes, Bandcamp etc in the next couple of weeks (and please help support your local record store by ordering from there). Albums will be dispatched to the lovely people who pre-ordered in mid April (before the price of stamps go up!)

We’re also making a new little video in April, so if you hop over and befriend our Facebook and Twitter pages, we’ll let you know when it’s online, plus we’ll be giving away a couple of signed albums.

Playing live – we return to Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho this coming Monday, before heading to the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, back to London and Boisdale in Canary Wharf (recorded for JazzFM), followed by a Birmingham gig at the home of the notorious honey vodka, The Polish Club, all in May …

Playing Soon …

Further spring dates released shortly

TGC Back in Birmingham!

Sam — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:58:35 +0000

To round off our summer tour, we’re putting together a very jolly evening back in our homelands of Birmingham, on Saturday 23rd July.

Taking place at the A.E.Harris Factory in the Jewellery Quarter (home of the brilliant Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company), we’ll be playing material from our new album, along with several special guests, a photography exhibition, home-made bunting, some lovely food and drink on sale, some sofas to rest those weary behinds, and of course you’ll be able to invest in one of our limited EPs featuring three tracks from our forthcoming album, Release the Penguins.

We’re also embarking on a little experiment that may well see us bankrupt, but we’re letting everyone pay what they want to come in! You can pay anything from £1, 5, 10, to … well, however far your overdraft/partner/coke habit will allow. All proceeds from the evening will help us to fund production, manufacture and relevant bribery for our new album.

As long as we’re not being chased by the bailiffs, we’ll also give 10% of profits from the evening to Jessie’s Fund, a UK charity helping seriously ill and disabled children by using music for communication and for therapy.

Advance Booking / Tickets

If you want to book in advance, you can buy tickets securely online below through Google Checkout, and bring a printout of your confirmation email along on the night. There’ll also be plenty of tickets to buy on the door. (Select ‘eTickets’ for your shipping option. Sorry in advance for the 50p card processing fee!).

Confirmed line-up

- TGC playing a set featuring new material from Release The Penguins
- A set from the wonderful Kora player Dan Wilkins
- A small jazz photography exhibition and sale from Russ Escritt and Garry Corbett
- Food, Cake and Coffee from VEGed Out
- Fully licensed bar

Also, just in case you missed it, our first album as TG Collective – Release The Penguins – is released nationwide this autumn, distributed by Proper Music. We’ll have pre-order links through to Amazon shortly. More on all that here.

Saturday 23rd July, 2011
From 8.00pm
A.E. Harris Factory
110 Northwood Street, Birmingham, B3 1SZ

The AE Harris Factory is in the Jewellery Quarter, close to Birmingham City Centre.
For a map and directions, click here

(Photo above by Russ Escritt)

Summer Tour and New Album

Sam — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:06:54 +0000

After many long days toiling in the wilderness of Shropshire (along with the odd BBQ and band football match), we’re very happy to be close to finishing our new album – Release The Penguins. We’ll be mixing and mastering throughout May and June, before hopping off on tour throughout June and July, where we’ll be selling a limited pressing of 300 EP’s to anyone we catch, featuring three tracks from the album, before the full commercial release in the autumn. It’s our first release since Trio Gitano’s Who Ate All The Tapas? in 2005, so we’re pretty excited to finally have a TGC album ready after touring so much together in the last 3-4 years.

We’ve done the majority of recording in a little converted milking shed in the village of Whitton, near to Tenbury Wells, where we managed to get through a fair amount of brandy and apple pie.

As you can imagine, after spending so much time together, we have noticed that Alex, one of our engineers/co-producers, (originally hailing from the marginally sunnier climes of Uruguay) bears an uncanny resemblance to the Milk Tray Man …

Alas this still wasn’t quite alluring enough for one of the passing neighbours, who appeared to be on the verge of calling the Police about a suspected burgulary as a fearsome looking unshaven Uruguayan in a haze of cigarette smoke peered through the wrong window at dusk.

Back to the summer gigs … The tour kicks off with a return to The Stables on June 8th, wrapping up with a jolly evening in Birmingham on July 23rd, at the home of Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company, the AE Harris Factory, and a performance at Pizza Express Jazz Club, in Soho, London, on Tuesday August 2nd.

In between we visit York, Otley, Gainsborough, Bristol, Oundle, Bridgwater, and a return to the wonderful guitar-bonkers town of Lewes in East Sussex, after such a warm welcome we had in 2004 and 2005 performing at the Lewes Guitar Festival with Trio Gitano.

Full dates, listings and ticket info can be found here.

We must also thank the lovely PRS Foundation for New Music for supporting our tour. It’s the second time we’ve been lucky enough to be supported by the PRSF, and given the standard of new projects, commissions and artists they fund, we’re very grateful for their backing.

Throughout both June and July, our fine cajón-issimo Tom Chapman is off on his folky touring travels with the excellent Old Dance School and UFQ, so we’re very lucky to be welcoming the equally splendid Joelle Barker on tour, playing cajón and various percussive pots from strange and distant lands somewhere east of West Bromwich.

We’ll have pre-release EP’s on sale at all of our summer gigs, before the album hits whatever remaining record shops are left in the UK in September, along with all the usual online stores and digital outlets, distributed by Proper Music.

Just in case you don’t already, follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates along the way.

Meanwhile, back in Shropshire …

Album on the way!

Sam — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:50:27 +0000

It’s been a little while since we last ventured into the business of making records, so as the worldwide demand for CDs hits an all-time low, we thought it would be a splendid idea to record another one.

We began recording a few weeks ago in the excellent live room at the old Grosvenor Studios, in Handsworth, Birmingham (now ‘CMAT‘), where, most importantly for our studio-selection process, the theme to Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds was recorded. Apart from the side issue of recording, we managed to lock Tom in a sound booth for several hours, before Percy took an afternoon nap inside his bass case.

We have a few more sessions planned in the wilds of Worcestershire, and with an occasional afternoon of overdubbing in Ana Garcia’s kitchen thrown in for good measure, we’ll have the finished album landing by the end of March 2011, with a UK release tour kicking off later in the spring.

We’re co-producing the album alongside our engineers Alex Merola and Joe Peet, who are clearly only doing it to experience the delightful service offered by Virgin Trains to ferry them from London to the tranquil surrounds of Birmingham New Street station several times a week. In the middle of the night.

Thanks for the many emails and enquiries about the album … we’ll keep you posted with our progress, release dates and availability, and pop a few tracks up online in the next couple of months. Photos of Louis asleep at the microphone after his 47th take will also no doubt find their way onto our Twitter and Facebook pages.

In the meantime, here’s a short video of Percy having a little moment down in Devon last year …

Mostly Reviews

Sam — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:42:48 +0000

A couple of very nice people have written equally nice things about our trio performance at the first Mostly Jazz Festival last weekend …

Fiona Handscomb, for the Birmingham Post …

“Day Two in the Mostly Jazz house(/park). If Day One was all about the jazz-funk and the blistering drummers, Day Two was all about the jazz-jazz and prodigious guitarists.

Starting with Birmingham’s own TG Collective Trio: an insanely talented 3-piece who seem to have double the sound than there are members. All the strumming and picking and rhythms of gypsy, contemporary, flamenco jazz with a beautiful Bach arrangement thrown in for good measure.“

And Ian Mann, of thejazzmann.com …

“For today’s performance Fekete and Slater returned to a trio format augmenting their guitars with the double bass, trumpet and cajon of Collective member Percy Pursglove, co- founder of the Harmonic Festival.

The trio produced an eclectic programme that ranged widely and drew on many of their collective influences. Thus Django’s “Minor Swing” and “Minor Blues” bookended J.S. Bach, Pursglove switched between trumpet and bass for Horace Silver’s “Song For My Father” before moving on to cajon as the group expressed their flamenco leanings.

This was an enjoyable set, full of outstanding individual musicianship. A switch to the main stage with the full complement of the Collective should be in order for next year.“

(Photo by snapper-supreme Pete Ashton)

Percy-wise …

Sam — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:02:17 +0000

Our lovely cajón banging, trumpeting bassist Percy Pursglove features in the current July edition of Jazzwise Magazine, in their regular ‘Taking Off’ article … click below to read in full. (NB – those unfamiliar with Percy’s delightful features should note that alas, it is not he who features on the cover).

You can buy this fine publication here or at major newsagents UK-wide – a bargain £4.25 for slice of Pursglove!

Photography by our friend, the excellent Paul Broadrick.

(We’re not quite sure about Percy’s rumoured country retreat though …)

Coming up in July …

Sam — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:06:47 +0000

Coming up in July, we’re changing shape more times than the cabinet with four very different performances.

On Saturday 3rd, we’re closing the inaugural Be Festival – Birmingham’s European Theatre Festival – in the great surrounds of the AE Harris Building (home of the tremendous Stan’s Cafe).

A day later, on Sunday afternoon, we’re locking half of the group in Jamie’s new shed and cutting things down to a trio for the Django strand of another new festival, the first Mostly Jazz Festival, in Moseley Private Park, Birmingham.

On Thursday 8th, Louis will be released back into the wild as we return to our full instrumental line-up for the Brackley Music Festival, before we get even larger, and join forces with the very fine flamenco guitarist David Shepherd and Ana Garcia for a flamenco-based performance at Derby’s Déda Theatre on Saturday 10th. The Derby gig will feature new material from David and ourselves, new dances from Ana, and no half-time ice cream in a straight 75 minute set.

Full details and ticket info here

TGC on BBC1!

Sam — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:37:17 +0000

If you’re twiddling your thumbs this Sunday lunchtime before digesting your cabbage and gravy, you can catch us on that well known musical melting pot – The Politics Show – live on BBC1 at around 12.30pm, alas not discussing band expenses. The feature is part of the 2013 UK City of Culture award, where it appears our joyful homeland is gunning for cultural glory, up against those well-known cultural hotspots including Norwich and Derry. If for some inexplicable reason you’re not tuned in and are otherwise occupied with your gourmet bisto granules, you can still watch it on the BBC iPlayer for another week. We’ll pop a video online as well.

Meanwhile, we’re back on the road next weekend, kicking off the year in Shropshire and Herefordshire, before rumbling up for a few days in Cumbria and Durham in February, returning to the homelands of sunny Birmingham for a Birmingham Jazz gig at the Polish Club on February 27th.

Autumn Tour of Villages!

Sam — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:04:16 +0000

Our series of autumn dates kicked off at the Tewkesbury Festival a few of weeks ago, moving on to a couple of days in the fine lands of Dorset to begin our Autumn Tour of Villages, and continued with four nights up in sunny Yorkshire last weekend.

You can check out the full tour dates remaining over at the Gig Guide, starting this coming Thursday with three nights in back in Devon after last year’s great welcome, with the bandwagon rolling on to various venues in Shropshire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire in November.

You can also join us over at our Facebook pages for photos of our adventures in 2009, including the infamous Flamborough Test Match, Ana singing to some rather disturbed cows in Spanish, and Louis’ various shopping trips to the motorway services at 3am … http://www.tgcollective.com/facebook