Last weekend I was in Vienna with fifteen young musicians from the Holyhead School Band.We were guests of the Johann Sebastian Bach Pop Academy and our students worked and performed with students from the academy. The pop Academy is based in Gasometer which is the location of four massive old gas tanks that used to store the city’s gas supply. The buildings have been transformed and now are the home for shops, apartments, music venues, restaurants, the pop academy, jazz conservatoire and a massive musical instrument store.  It’s a really cool place to be with a great buzz about it.

 We first made contact with Raymond Walker, an ex Brummie musican, now working and living in Austria. Raymond runs his own company in Austria called Drum Energy and also teaches at the academy. He suggested it would be possible for us to visit, one thing led to another and in no time the band were getting on a plane to Vienna.

Our hostess Marianne made us feel very welcome and the staff and students of the academy were wonderful people. An unforgettable trip was had by all.

Holyhead School Band have been in the studio recently too so keep an eye out here for their first CD New New York!

Excellent article about myself and Surge in the Daily Mirror. Feel very proud to have my first feature in a tabloid. The journalist is a jazz fan and saw Surge play in the London Jazz Festival. Feel like a proper working class composer now with support from a good labour paper. Certainly couldn’t be saying that about the Guardian. Now if you wanted some champagne with your socialism……. Click here or on the pic for the full article.

Check out the latest review of Love Forgiven by Anto Morro in Folk London magazine.

I feel that it is a real stroke of genius to use a Ginsberg poem, which adds literary weight and credibility to the work.

Anto Morro… Folk London

Trevor Hodgett has done a little feature on me for this months R2 magazine.

There’s nothing like confounding your fans. Birmingham-based Northern Irishman Sid Peacock has a substantial reputation on the British jazz scene as the leader of avant-garde big band, Surge. So how does he explain the fact that he has now released a duo album with fiddler Ruth Angell, on which he plays acoustic guitar and sings, and which consist mainly of Irish traditional tunes and original singer-songwriter material?

Trevor Hodgett – Rock & Reel magazine Jan/Feb 2013

  Click here to read the whole article. Better still subscribe to R2.

Our good friend Delhi-based poet Sudeep Sen has been invited to address the Nobel Laureate Week being held in Saint Lucia.  Ruth and I met Sudeep when recording Love Forgiven at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig and he gave us permission to put music to his haiku The Kiss and include it on our CD.

We are making plans to collaborate further with Sudeep in 2013 putting his words to music for performance and recording. You will be able hear The Kiss and other works from Sudeep when Peacock Angell perform at the MAC centre on 19th March.