There was a time when UK pantomime was heavily populated by Australian soap stars; rather late in the day Jason Donovan – formerly known as Scott from Neighbours – makes his panto debut, as Count (careful how you pronounce that, Jason) Ramsay of Erinsborough.

The picture seen above doesn’t have quite the same resonance as Art Kane’s 1958 shot A Great Day in Harlem which brought 57 American jazz musicians in front of his lens, but it is nonetheless significant. Here, in 1971, is an evocative, unique record of a moment in West Midlands music history. The shot was taken at the opening of Heavy Head Records, a Sparkhill record shop run by Move/Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan. The shop was formerly a toy store run by his mother.

When those cold winter nights start closing in, there is really only two choices for facing up to the unpleasantness that this brings. Stay at home, batten down the hatches, whack up the heating and blow the expense. Or go out and immerse yourself in some hot and sweaty rock’n’roll.

With its themes of racism, violence, oppression and climate change, Marvin Gaye's 1971 album, What's Going On, is as pertinent today as it was when it was released 50 years ago. Presented by Tomorrow’s Warriors, Nu Civilisation Orchestra played this seminal body of work with all the soul and spirit the record merits, in a performance that was both inherently faithful to the album, but still unique.

"Nature is healing," declared the social media meme, back in the early days of lockdown when humanity had temporarily retreated to focus on its banana bread. There were pictures to prove it, apparently. Dolphins sported in the canals of Venice; city gardens filled with newly emboldened songbirds. Didn’t a herd of goats colonise Llandudno at one point? Something like that, anyway.

Having been founded only in 2017 by singer/songwriter Eric Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada, Black Pumas have been rapidly rising to fame, with a Grammy award nomination in 2020 and the majority of their current European tour dates sold out.

Kicking off a brand new partnership between the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Hockley Social Club, this first ever Symphonic Session saw a string quartet from the CBSO take centre stage at Birmingham’s latest street-food venue, Hockley Social Club, on Thursday evening. Hockley Social Club is the new, permanent Brum-based home for street-food stalwarts Digbeth Dining Club.

With a few extra dates to her rescheduled UK tour, Scottish folk legend Karine Polwart returned to Birmingham Town Hall with some tunes from her latest album – Still as You’re Sleeping, an album of just voice and piano recording with jazz pianist Dave Milligan – plus a mix of earlier material, covers and traditional songs given her own signature twist. On stage with Polwart for this tour is her brother, guitarist Steven Polwart, and her neighbour and friend, multi-instrumentalist Inge Thomson.

Is there any composer alive who writes more luminously bittersweet elegies than Mark-Anthony Turnage? Taking key lines from memorialising poets through the ages as inspiration, he knows that instrumental phrases must sing, sometimes to invisible words, as well as dance if they’re to pierce the heart.