13 street pianos have been dotted around popular Manchester locations, and they’re free for the public to play all month.
The annual Manchester Jazz Festival (mjf) is arriving in our city on Friday 20 – Sunday 29 May, and to properly celebrate the 2022 edition in style, festival organisers have teamed up with the beloved Forsyth Music Shop to place over a dozen pianos at well-known sites in the hunt for Manchester’s most entertaining street pianist.
You don’t even need any technical talent or formal training either, as the competition is open to everyone from concert pianists, to the occasional ivory tickler.
If you haven’t spotted any of the pianos yet, then make sure to keep your eyes peeled across the city centre as they’re located at Manchester Arndale, The Corn Exchange, Forsyth Music Shop, Great Northern, Harvey Nichols, Royal Exchange Arcade, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Central Library, Manchester Piccadilly Station, and Manchester Victoria Station.
A little further afield, pianos have also been placed at Spinningfields, Quayside in MediaCityUK, and even at the Trafford Centre.
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Manchester Arndale and the Corn Exchange are just two of the locations where pianos have been installed / Credit: The Manc Group
All 13 of the pianos are now available for passers-by to play, but for those who think they can give Elton John or Billy Joel a good run for their money, then there’s a whole raft of prizes up for grabs too.
Some of the prizes you can get your hands on in the limited-time-only competition include a Yamaha P-45B piano, a return ticket for two anywhere on the Northern Rail Network, a gift package and vouchers worth over £100 from MediaCityUK, an afternoon tea for two at 20 Stories, £30 Wagamama vouchers for each prize winner, and so much more.
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Speaking on the mjf Piano Trial, Emma Loat – Manager of Forsyth’s Music – said: “For many years, we’ve had a street piano at the front of the Forsyth’s shop on Deansgate, so we know that Manchester and the surrounding areas is full of talented musicians and those willing to have a go [and] we’re really excited to supply 13 pianos for the mjf piano trail.
“We’d urge all those budding performers to come forward, have a go, and be in with a chance of winning some fantastic prizes.”
We're bringing music to the streets of Manchester this May with the #mjfpianotrail, delivered with our friends at @ForsythMusic 🎹
13 pianos will be dotted around the city centre from 6 – 29 May, and we're on the lookout for MCR's best street pianists!
— manchester jazz festival (@ManJazzFest) May 4, 2022
To be in with a chance to be named one of Manchester’s best street pianists, all you’ll need to do is find one of the pianos in the trail, take a short video of your performance, and post the video to your Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter account tagging in @manchesterjazzfestival / @manjazzfest and using the hashtag #mjfpianotrail.
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At the end of the piano trail, mjf and Forsyth’s will pick nine lucky winners based on who showed the most “creativity, ingenuity, and gave the best performances”.
‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Benson Boone has announced a headline gig in Manchester – and it’s a big one
Danny Jones
American pop sensation and unrivalled king of unnecessary front flips, Benson Boone, has just announced his first-ever headline Manchester arena gig as part of a new arena tour.
The solo artist and acrobatic chart-topper has seen a meteoric rise in the US and, as is usually the case across the Atlantic, he’s become increasingly popular over here too.
Benson may have performed here in Manchester before as part of the 2024 MTV EMAs and for a small show at The Deaf Institute, but now big fans have the added Boone of getting to watch a standalone show at one of Europe’s leading indoor entertainment venues.
Announced on Friday, 30 May, the 22-year-old will be making his way across the pond from Washington for a limited run of UK concerts, with a date at Co-op Live arena being one of just five dates.
Extending his ‘American Heart Tour’ ahead of the release of his eponymous sophomore record, with this autumn leg, Co-op Live will mark his individual visit to 0161.
The Grammy-nominated artist has earned several nods of recognition already for his first album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, which was released just last spring.
He has been described as among the current trend of male singers who fit into the American Idol and ‘Voice audition pop’ genre (a term recently coined online), along with the likes of Teddy Swims, Shawn Mendes, Alex Warren and others.
Regardless of the slightly tongue-in-cheek term, he’s become a huge hit around the world and landing him is still a big coup for the venue that has already welcomed similarly massive pop contemporaries like Swims, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and more.
In case you’re wondering just how big a deal he is over in the States, even this early in his career, his domestic headline dates sold out in seconds, quite literally…
The last time he visited Co-op Live was to perform at the most recent MTV EMAs
Benson Boone is coming to Manchester on Monday, 27 October and will be playing just two other British venues: The O2 in London (two nights) and the Utilita Arena in Birmingham.
Safe to say you don’t want to miss this one if you like soaring vocals and lots of flipping.
General admission tickets go live at 10am on Thursday, 5 June, but Co-op Members can gain access via the arena’s official pre-sale window from the same time on Tuesday (3 Jun).
Emily Sergeant -
9th May 2022 
