Broadcaster Stuart Maconie ready to return to the West Midlands for celebration of the music he loves

Writer and BBC Radio 6 Music broadcaster Stuart Maconie will be bringing his Northern Soul Orchestrated UK tour to Birmingham Symphony Hall on November 29, following on from the success of the show at The Halls Wolverhampton in April.

The tour will transport audiences back in time capturing the spirit of a movement which originated in the industrial regions in the 1960s and 70s across the North and the Midlands and emerged as a passionate and vibrant all-night dance movement centred around American soul music.

The show in Birmingham will be a virtual homecoming gig for Stuart, who makes his home in Bearwood, and will mark the end of a movement which started at the Royal Albert Hall in London during the Proms season and which gained pace in Wolverhampton, a show and a venue he said he really enjoyed.

He said: "It was fantastic and it was one of the first shows we had done since the Proms, which was such an amazing success, and then Simon at SJM Concerts rang me up and said he had heard great things about this and we should take it on the road.

"The first one of these we did was in Wolverhampton and it was a great success as Wolverhampton had one of the famous early Northern Soul clubs called the Catacombs, which I mentioned on the night and asked if anyone had been there, with a lot of people saying they had.

"It was like a cellar, but was a cellar in the sky as it was on the second floor of a former smelting works on Temple Street and was one of the early influential clubs.

"I've been to the Civic in the past and I live in Bearwood, so I'm an adopted Black Country/Brummie person, so I've been and I think it's a great venue, right in the middle of town."

The show in Birmingham will be curated by Stuart and conducted by Joe Duddell, with the orchestra performing new arrangements, by Fiona Brice and Joe Duddell, of Northern Soul classic anthems with a host of very special guest vocalists.

Stuart said the music had always been part of his life, growing up in Wigan and listening to them in clubs in the town, but said he could never have imagined that he would be curating a show at Birmingham Symphony Hall or the Royal Albert Hall.

He said: "If you'd said to me when I was listening to these records as a 13-year-old and dancing with my mates at the disco that I'd be premièring this at the Albert Hall and playing them at Symphony Hall, I would have been astonished.

"The Symphony Hall is one of the world's great concert venues and it's going to be a blast and is going to be fantastic as what we do it transform these places.

"When we did the Albert Hall, my only slight worry was that the venue might sanitise the experience, as Northern Soul is sweaty and passionate, but we found that everyone was up on their feet all across that vast venue, which was an incredibly goose-pimply, thrilling experience, and it'll be the same at the Symphony Hall."

He said that he felt he had the luckiest job in the world, listening to great music and getting up in front of an audience to speak six times during the show and said that while people might feel his name carried some weight towards it, he felt the music was the most important part of the show.

He said: "I have a great job and it's a great thing that I'm associated with as I get to hang out, I get to be part of and I'm just ragging on other people's brilliance really.

"I guess people might think that I know what I'm talking about or that they like me off the radio or my books and I think it was made very clear at the beginning that it did need a public facing person to talk about the music and that really works and is a great thrill for me to walk onto these huge stages and feel the excitement from the crowd.

"It's incredibly moving as well as you're playing the music to the devotees for whom this is the soundtrack to their lives, of happy and sad times, and it's the music they got married to, divorced to, been bereaved and been at the birth of their children, so the music is wonderful and has been with these people their whole lives."

The whole experience for Stuart Maconie is one he said he cherishes and hopes will run and run, even when he's been roped in to singing along to some of the songs in the encore.

He said: "I have been roped in on occasion as I used to go off the stage somewhat awkwardly, but over the last few shows, Vula Malinga stopped me going off stage and I've, rather sheepishly, done backing vocals to Frank Wilson's 'Joe, I love You', so I get to do a bit.

"I'm so excited for November and I hope this doesn't sound mercenary of me, but I hope it runs and runs and it's something I'd almost do for nothing as we get off stage and we're all just buzzing.

"I promise you that you will have one of the greatest nights out of your life, which I know sounds arrogant, but I can say this with some confidence as we've done six of these and the audience have gone away ecstatic, so even if you don't know Northern Soul, you will go away converted."

Tickets for 6 Music’s Northern Soul Orchestrated UK tour curated by Stuart Maconie are available for Birmingham Symphony Hall on November 29 at gigsandtours.com /www.ticketmaster.co.uk