WOULD you like to learn from and share a stage with a MOBO Award-winning artist?

Manchester music venue Band on the Wall and performing arts group Brighter Sound are looking for 10 young professional musicians for their latest Jazz Directors Series.

Those selected will form the ‘Inner City Ensemble’ and work alongside pianist, composer and bandleader Zoe Rahman.

Over one week the group will rehearse and perform works composed and recorded by Zoe including new arrangements developed from her most recent solo piano album Dreamland.

Zoe and the Inner City Ensemble will then go on a short tour with a date at Warrington’s Pyramid centre on Saturday, October 21.

She said: “I’m really looking forward to working with open-minded improvising artists who have a strong grounding in jazz, a deep sense of groove and who like to listen to a wide range of musical styles. There will be opportunities for all of the musicians to shine individually as well as contribute to the ensemble as a whole. Hopefully the project will be challenging, rewarding and above all fun for all of us.”

The idea behind the Jazz Directors Series is to give some of the UK’s most promising professional jazz musicians a platform.

Organisers are looking for those who can play double bass, drums, flute, clarinet, trumpet, alto sax, tenor sax, trombone and tuba.

And a good working knowledge of drum and bass, afrobeat and township jazz styles is preferable.

Zoe studied classical piano at the Royal Academy of Music, took a music degree at Oxford University and then won a scholarship to study jazz performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Her second album, Melting Pot, was nominated in 2006 for the Mercury Music Prize and it also won Jazz Album of the Year at the UK’s first Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Zoe then won a MOBO Award for her fifth album Kindred Spirits in 2012. Culture Warrington has been involved with the event since it launched in 2015.

And in previous years the town has welcomed Grammy-winning jazz artist Terence Blanchard, who has who has composed the music for every Spike Lee film since the 90s, and US jazz saxophonist and composer Chris Potter as part of the initiative.

n The deadline for applications is Sunday, August 13. Visit bandonthewall.org.

Each successful applicant will receive £650 for a week’s work plus expenses. For more information call Tim Chatterton at Brighter Sound on 0161 830 3899.