AWARDS:
Young composer scoops award
The composer Luke Bedford has not yet turned 30, but his works have already been performed by the Hallé Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta. Phyllida Barlow, a sculptor in her sixties, is thinking about retirement from her post as professor of fine art at the Slade. Despite their difference in age, both are winners of the UK's largest arts awards.
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Radar Music Video awards at ICA
Talented new filmmakers travel across the world to get to the Radar Music Video Awards at the ICA on Saturday 12th Jan, presented by Kim Taylor Bennett. Keen to meet music video professionals and each other, they’re also coming to find out who’ll win the popular vote and student prizes and who’s won mentoring from the three production companies supporting Radar this year.
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INDUSTRY NEWS:
Classic FM signs 25-concert deal
Classic FM has struck its biggest live music deal with a series of 25 concerts featuring the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, to be presented by Katie Derham.
The GCap Media station has signed a five-year partnership with the Liverpool Philharmonic and will broadcast a series of special programmes featuring the orchestra throughout 2008.
The deal represents Classic FM's single biggest investment in live orchestral music.
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EMI boss threatens to axe artists who do not work hard enough
EMI has suggested that it is prepared to axe artists who do not work hard enough as the group takes a fresh approach to the music business under its new private equity owners.
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Old concert halls to reopen amid live music boom
A live music boom driven by bands ranging from the newest guitar acts to reformed rock dinosaurs will lead to the reopening of former concert halls across Britain next year.
Academy Music Group, the UK's biggest owner of live venues, will today unveil plans for three new ones with capacities of more than 2,000 in 2008, including the refurbishment of legendary names like the Roxy in Sheffield and the Town & Country Club in Leeds.
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Musicians and artists join the fight
A host of musicians and artists, including Annie Lennox and Damien Hirst, will use their talents to raise money for victims of Aids in several major events over the next few months. Today sees major figures from the world of music, such as Peter Gabriel, Corinne Bailey Rae and the band Razorlight, take to the stage for the Nelson Mandela Aids benefit concert.
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New talent competition for Glastonbury
Glastonbury New Talent 2008 is a competition that does exactly what it says on the tin: searches out new bands, whittles them down to a select few and puts them on the Jazz World, Other and Pyramid stages to make their debut.
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NEW MEDIA:
Major labels targeted by iTunes rival
Music download store eMusic is hoping the changing attitude of big music labels to copyright protection will mean their tracks could soon be available on its website.
The world's second biggest digital music store already carries 2m tracks from independent-label artists but it is hoping that it will soon be able to add songs from at least one of the world's four major labels, Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI.
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Dial M for music - labels bank on mobile downloads
Record labels are predicting that this month's launch of three new mobile phone music services will usher a return of rising sales after years of decline.
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FESTIVALS:
London Jazz Festival
The London Jazz Festival thrives on mining new seams of interest. This year it staged nearly 200 events in more than 40 venues, attracting an audience as diverse as the people on a London street.
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uniTRUCK Indoor Festival
The organisers of one of the summer’s coolest festivals for new music, TRUCK, are launching a new indoor festival travangaza called uniTRUCK. In the spirit of a real summer festival, there will also be a stalls area, plastic cows, grass and roasted chestnuts.
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Wembley hosts Muslim Live8
The charity pop concert for Darfur has been described as a Muslim Live8 and features artists who, although unknown to mainstream audiences and record companies in Britain, have sold millions of albums in Muslim-majority countries.
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PEOPLE:
Ghost writer: the unsung star of British music
She's hardly known outside the music industry, yet Amanda Ghost is increasingly seen as Britain's most influential songwriter. Sophie Morris talks to a young Londoner who has penned hits for everyone from James Blunt to Beyoncé
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For One Night Only, Yorkshire town becomes international rock capital
The small North Yorkshire town of Helmsley is not a typical home of rock. However, the town has become a rock capital. A film by local band One Night Only has become the talking point of MySpace, where it has been receiving 5m hits a day.
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A SELECTION OF ONLINE REVIEWS OF RECENT UK CD RELEASES:
The Maccabees – Colour It In (Fiction)
(Alternative)
Colour It In is something special indeed. While not as Earth-eating as the Arctic’s first album, it certainly deserves to find itself in any self-respecting record collection and 'Best Of 2007' lists come end of the year.
BBC collective review
Kano – London Town (679)
(Hip hop)
First things first; this definitively ain’t the sound of London. With this release Kano may be paying lip service to his roots, but the style and aspirations are international.
BBC collective review
Jack Penate – Matinee (XL)
(Indie)
Matinee showcases 11 tracks of mainly quirky and hummably poptastic skiffle-pop, as best exemplified on the single and opener “Spit At Stars”.
BBC collective review
Kate Rusby - Awkward Annie (Pure)
(Folk)
In a world of rumbling change and shifting ground, Kate Rusby has become as reliable and comfortable as a chair by a roaring fire; her songs and her singing have a consistency that many artists would give their right arm for.
BBC collective review
Gwilym Simcock – Perception (Basho)
(Jazz)
Simock is an awesome original, but he’s a creative listener, too. If this is just the beginning, the coming years defy imagining.
Guardian review
Howard Skempton – Ben Somewhen by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, EXAUDI, James Weeks (NMC)
(Contemporary classical)
Pairs chamber music performed by BCMG - ranging from solo cello to the exuberant yet very English Chamber Concerto - with choral music sung by EXAUDI, including the dancing, evocative setting of Shelley, The Voice of the Spirits.
NMC.com review
Stockhausen – Stimmung by Theatre of Voices / Hillier (Harmonia Mundi)
(Contemporary classical)
The recording places the voices (three female, three male) in a more spacious acoustic than before, far closer to what you experience when Stimmung is performed live, and lending even more enchantment to this extraordinary work.
Guardian Review
Nicolas Hodges – Sciarrino: Noctures, Piano Music 1994-2001 (Metronome)
(Contemporary classical)
It is always music of great imaginative sweep and power, informed by an immensely refined sensibility and the acutest ear for sonority; Hodges's performances are wonderfully committed, too.
Guardian review
Steven Osborne – Tippett Complete Piano Music (Hyperion)
(Contemporary Classical)
The performances serve Tippett’s teeming imagination with sympathy, energy and commitment.
Classicalsource.com review
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