Special events
Details of a variety of events taking place as part of BBC Music.
Published: 16 June 2014
Glastonbury Festival
This June, the BBC returns to Glastonbury to bring audiences more of the music they love.
On BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, Radio 1 and 1Xtra, Radio 2 and 6 Music, BBC Red Button and online, the BBC will deliver the biggest and best moments from the world’s most iconic festival to audiences across the world.
The coverage will be fronted by some of the BBC’s most well-known presenters - including Chris Evans, Jo Whiley, Dermot O’Leary, Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq, Stuart Maconie, Cerys Matthews, Mark Radcliffe, Fearne Cotton, Huw Stephens and Annie Mac.
This year’s BBC Glastonbury offering will be the most comprehensive digital coverage ever with six stages being live streamed on four screens - PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV. A wealth of content will be available at bbc.co.uk/glastonbury and the BBC Glastonbury live blog will guide listeners to the BBC’s best moments, giving people access to behind-the-scenes moments that even ticket holders can’t experience.
BBC at the Quay
BBC at the Quay, the BBC’s cultural celebration running alongside the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, will offer audiences a huge variety of musical entertainment.
Between 19 July and 3 August, the pop-up festival site outside BBC Scotland’s headquarters at Pacific Quay will host programmes from Ken Bruce for Radio 2 with guests including Texas, Simple Minds, Amy Macdonald and Paloma Faith, Radio 1Xtra’s Live Lounge with Maverick Sabre, and BBC Introducing with new artists Public Service Broadcasting and Prides for BBC Radio Scotland.
A concert for the Asian Network features Raghu Dixit, Tigerstyle and Rax Timyr Productions, Radio 3 presents Jazz Line-Up with Maceo Parker and the BBC Big Band, and World On 3 with headliners Bellowhead.
Further shows include Radio Scotland’s Commonwealth Connections featuring Shooglenifty and Capercaillie and Another Country featuring Steve Earle, Sharon Shannon and Roddy Hart, and no Scottish event would be complete without a ceilidh, for BBC ALBA and Radio nan Gaidheal with Karen Matheson, Siobhan Miller and Dàimh.
Tickets for all events are free and available through bbc.co.uk/thequay and more acts are still to be confirmed. All concerts will be broadcast either on radio, online or television.
BBC Performing Groups
The BBC’s six performing groups each play a unique role in British cultural life. Based in Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Salford, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers and the BBC Philharmonic, reach an audience of millions with their wide-ranging and distinctive programming.
Performing with the world’s leading conductors and soloists, the six BBC performing groups give around 400 concerts a year in over 60 locations across the UK as well as touring worldwide. In the last 12 months the groups have been to Japan, India, the Middle East and much of mainland Europe. They provide around 600 hours of distinctive music-making for BBC Radio, have given more than 60 world premiere performances in the last year, and organise more than 100 learning and outreach projects across the country, bringing music to tens of thousands of people of all ages across the UK.
The BBC performing groups are the backbone of the BBC Proms, collectively giving almost half of the concerts at the world’s largest classical music festival and extraordinarily, one in every 50 BBC employees is a musician in the performing groups.
Today it is announced that BBC Philharmonic Presents… will be returning this September with orchestral collaborations across seven of the BBC’s national radio networks, from Radio 1 to the Asian Network.
More details will follow this summer, but for now it can be revealed that a live documentary will be performed on Radio 5 live in late September about the Miracle at Medinah, the incredible Ryder Cup story from two years ago. Live narration and archive footage will combine to tell the story accompanied by an hour of live music performed by the BBC Philharmonic. And there will be an exciting collaboration between the orchestra and BBC Asian Network celebrating the work of legendary Bollywood composer RD Burman.
BBC Proms
As the world’s biggest and longest-running classical music festival, the BBC Proms offers eight weeks of world-class music-making from a vast array of leading orchestras, conductors and soloists from the UK and around the world.
Across more than 90 concerts, the festival aims to offer a summer of music that allows for the most diverse and exciting musical journeys. 119 years since it was founded, the driving factor in building a festival of this scale is to offer exceptional music-making at the lowest possible prices, and this summer - for the ninth year running - promming tickets remain at £5.
With every Prom broadcast live on Radio 3, an extensive online offering and many televised on the BBC, the Proms reaches far and beyond the Royal Albert Hall.
In 2014 BBC television welcomes a new roster of presenters to lead the Proms broadcasts across BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four, including soprano Danielle de Niese, organist Wayne Marshall, BBC News presenter Razia Iqbal and one-handed pianist Nicholas McCarthy. BBC Two’s Saturday evening review show, Proms Extra, returns and is to increase from six episodes to seven, hosted by Katie Derham.
More than 300,000 people attended the Proms in 2013 with millions worldwide accessing broadcasts of the concerts. The range of music on offer this summer includes two performances each by the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestras, as well as orchestras from unexpected corners of the globe including China, Qatar and South Korea and debut performances by Paloma Faith, Rufus Wainwright and the Pet Shop Boys.
BBC Young Musician
BBC Young Musician is the UK’s leading contest for young classical musicians and, since its first outing in 1978, has established an enviable reputation for finding outstanding new talent.
Following his thrilling performance of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini at last month’s final, 17-year-old pianist Martin James Bartlett was named BBC Young Musician 2014, taking his place alongside a star-studded list of former winners and finalists that includes Alison Balsom, Nicholas Daniel, Benjamin Grosvenor, Stephen Hough and Jennifer Pike.
In her new role as Ambassador, 2004 winner Nicola Benedetti returned to the competition this year to offer support and advice to all three finalists ahead of their concerto performances with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kirill Karabits.
Over 450 young people applied for the 2014 competition and following four strongly competitive stages, three performers were selected for the final which took place at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. It was broadcast in full on BBC Four and Radio 3.
For the first time in 2014, BBC Young Musician’s reach was further extended with the introduction of a Jazz Award. Running alongside the established classical music format, the final took place at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, in March and was broadcast on BBC Four. The winner of the first ever BBC Young Musician Jazz Award 2014 was 17-year-old saxophonist Alexander Bone.
