Experience all the excess of the golden age with your loved one this Valentine’s Day weekend at LiverBirdLand’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ event on 11th February. Up and coming event promoter HarrisWorks is bringing a touch of the personal to Cain’s Brewery’s Red Brick Vintage and we went down to find out what to expect of what is bound to be a highlight of Liverpool’s ‘Love Season’.
On a Sunday night, in the imposing courtyard of the Baltic Triangle’s Cain’s Brewery Village, fairy lights overhead were reflecting and distorting in puddles gathering raindrops. We were stood there wondering if we were in the right place.
There was a vague flutter of applause somewhere close and we found ourselves faced with a thick black curtain. We peeled that curtain back, and there we were, back in time, for HarrisWorks’ night of curated jazz: LiverBirdLand at Red Brick Vintage.
My first question was how does a music night fit into an antiques shop after hours? The answer? Pretty damn well.
LiverBirdLand (get it?) was in its second run on 21st January. Following the diligent work of Liverpool-born American-raised Leona Harris and her company HarrisWorks, the event has also welcomed young scouse entrepreneur Joe, AKA Shanti Bars.
‘I built this whole thing’, Joe says of the bar top I am leaning on. ‘We secured stock and partnership with local ales and all three of us [HarrisWorks, Red Brick Vintage] are just cranking out as many events as we can.’
As well as the bar, the personal touches in LiverBirdLand are present everywhere you look: Tiffany lamp shades adorned each table’s tea-lights; the stage itself was delicately styled to look like the studio apartment of some socialite, living free and easy in 1950s Manhattan.
The stage was also set with singer Heather Simmons herself (and her talented pianist husband). Her faux fur jacket adorning her shoulders, Heather breezed through some of the most culturally relevant hits of the early-mid 20th Century.
I say ‘breezed’, but not in the sense that Simmons made light of the songs. Instead, if the history and meanings of songs such as ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ and ‘Non, Je ne regrette rien’ were a language, Simmons would speak it fluently.
Each song was introduced in the typical casual style; with a small lecture on the history or a related anecdote of Heather’s own or of the jazz age. The small, intimate crowd who huddled together around the clothed tables downing red wine and Gin Rickeys, lapped it all up in this rich, overwhelming environment that HarrisWorks and Red Brick Vintage had created.
There are few events out there that romance a patron as much as LiverBirdLand does. In what HarrisWorks promises as ‘a low-key romantic date to remember’, the live jazz night and the Shati Bar will be returning to Red Brick Vintage.
At 7pm on February 11th 2018, you can fall in love all over again with LiverBirdLand’s ‘My Funny Valentine‘ Jazz session, this time featuring young Leeds-based Jazz star Hannah Hutton.
Treat the girl, treat the boy, or treat yourself for Valentine’s Day with LiverBirdLand’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ show. Tickets available from HERE via Eventbrite (+booking fee) and from Red Brick Vintage for £4, £3 concessions, or £5 on the door.
