UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 04 JULY 2019
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Eastside Jazz Club acted as one of just three venues hosting the world’s first 5G music lesson, led by popular musician and songwriter Jamie Cullum.
Cullum, playing piano in the two thousand year old Roman Amphitheatre in London, performed live with amateur musicians in Bristol and Birmingham, teaching the musicians in a unique multi-site lesson that connected the three cities across the UK; as if the musicians were playing in the same room.
The event was organised by the charity Music for All, and aimed to demonstrate how 5G technology can remove barriers to learning by ultimately delivering super low-delay connectivity over distances everywhere, enabling skills to be shared with others wherever they may be located.
Musicians were connected between London, Birmingham and Bristol using 5G technology from BT and EE, King’s College London, Smart Internet Lab at the University of Bristol and Digital Catapult.
The amateur musicians in Jamie’s 5G band were selected from an open call for applications.
The musicians in Birmingham included Junior Royal Birmingham Conservatoire student and drummer Jakob Terry, along with guitarist and singer Jeremy Levif and bassist Alyson Knott. The band played one track from Jamie’s recently released album ‘Taller’, a classic Jamie Cullum track, plus a cover of a Bill Withers song before live jamming to an audience of over 2,000 across the three locations and via a 5G-powered live stream hosted on the charity’s Facebook page.