BBC Radio Blog Feed

1Xtra Live: The 1Xtra family goes on tour

2011-11-30T12:55:00+00:00

Manchester headliner Wretch 32

1Xtra Live is a stand-out event in the 1Xtra Calendar. A free event for more than 12,000 young music fans, in four cities. It's an opportunity for the station to get out on the road and showcase what 1Xtra is all about. It's also a chance for us to get out and meet our existing audience and enable them to interact with the station they love, this is a great way of bringing the network to the audience.

In the past 1Xtra Live has been single distinctive shows and since 2008 we've taken it to Coventry, Sheffield & London. This year the decision was taken to expand this into a tour, allowing 1Xtra to really highlight the breadth of 1Xtra, showcasing Xtra RnB, Xtra Hip Hop, Xtra Drum and Bass and Xtra Dub Step and bringing unique content both to audience at the live shows and for those listening or watching at home.

The tour kicked off in Manchester and headliner Wretch 32 blew our amazing 1Xtra crowd away. We're moved to Birmingham with dubstep duo, Nero, then to Bristol with Chase and Status and culminating with a finale in London's Brixton Academy with Kelly Rowland and Jessie J.

In addition to the main show, each day Tim Westwood is broadcasting his 4pm-7pm 1xtra show live from a student union in each city. We're also showing our commitment to discovering new UK talent with our "Time to Shine" section at each event. In each city a local act gets 4 minutes on stage on front of the crowd and those listening or watching from home in a potentially career-changing moment.

Obviously doing four shows in four different cities back to back with one team brings its own challenges in terms of production, as each venue has its own capabilities and restrictions. A key consideration in the planning of the tour has been the look and feel of each live show as we wanted some form of continuity to tie the four events together. This has been achieved by working closely with the visualisation team and the marketing team through key lighting, video elements and set pieces.

A huge challenge has been to try to deliver the slick and glossy look that we have developed in previous years at bigger venues, and transfer this into smaller venues so that the event feels like more than just a live music gig. We really want to make it stand out. We've been working really closely with the artists and their creative teams to enhance their performances with pyro effects, dancers and some really exciting collaborations with special guests.

What's been great with this project is the cumulative group approach across the 1Xtra family, in the extensive planning and pulling together of this tour. 1Xtra now reaches just under a million people, and each year we do this event, the awareness of the station just keeps on growing - I really hope we continue that tradition this year. And who knows....maybe through us getting out and meeting more young music fans and introducing them to the station, we'll soon be reaching over a million listeners...

1Xtra Live 2011 will be simulcast on both BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC Radio 1 as well streamed live online and broadcast live on Red Button.

Rob Spring is executive producer, Live Events BBC Radio 1 & 1Xtra

Details of 1Xtra Live on BBC Red Button: What's on when
Details of 1Xtra Live on the BBC website

Daily live concerts on BBC Radio 3

2011-02-18T11:10:16+00:00

BBC Radio 3 has just announced that its rich schedule of concerts, operas and recitals will be further enhanced from May 3, 2011 when listeners will be able to hear LIVE broadcasts direct from venues across the UK every weekday evening in Performance on 3. Here, Radio 3 Editor Edward Blakeman offers a look behind the scenes.

I just love the prospect of live evening concerts on Radio 3! My colleagues and I have thought about it and planned it for months - since the end of last season's Proms in fact, and that was what gave us the idea. There is such a buzz during the Proms - 8 weeks of concerts all broadcast live on Radio 3 - so wouldn't it be great if you could carry that sense of really 'being there' on into the rest of the year? if you could offer Radio 3 listeners a live concert each weekday night - something that had never been done before.

Continue reading this blog post and leave a comment on the BBC Radio 3 blog...

The picture shows Finnish quartet Meta4 rehearshing for a live Radio 3 performance at the Wigmore Hall in 2009.

Three evenings of joy at The Roundhouse

2010-11-01T14:12:21+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/electricproms/2010/

I woke up on a high this morning. As well as Liverpool fighting their way out of the relegation zone, I experienced three amazing gigs at the BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Three iconic Radio 2 artists. Three very different, but equally ecstatic, audiences.

Elton John opened the proceedings. But this wasn't the huge arena show you might expect from one of our national treasures. Instead Elton performed in the intimate setting of London's Roundhouse with his idol Leon Russell, who first watched Elton perform in the early Seventies at LA's Troubadour club. Their recent album 'The Union' seems to have given Elton a new energy and vigour and like so many great creative people, he's re-invented himself once more. The unique collaborations are one of the joys of Electric Proms. Elton on stage with Plan B and with Rumer respectively showed how different generations can still be united by music.

The culmination of Friday night's Robert Plant was a spine-tingling performance with the London Oriana Choir which followed a rapturously received version of 'Rock n Roll'. As he reminded the audience, Robert had first performed on the Roundhouse stage with Led Zeppelin 40 years earlier. Four decades on, with the incredible Band of Joy, Robert Plant was as compelling as ever. BBC 2 has a real treat in store for fans of this extraordinary artist: The 'Robert Plant By Myself' documentary that transmits this Saturday evening is one of the most revealing interview for many years - the perfect compliment to the live performance.

The final show saw Radio 2 favourite Neil Diamond perform so many of those classic tunes that have made him such a loved songwriter, including songs that he's written for others, like The Monkees' 'I'm a Believer.' The Roundhouse crowd were in fine form singing and rowing along with Lulu as she performed 'The Boat that I Row'. I've never known an audience so full of love for their hero, which you will be able to see when the concert is broadcast on BBC 2 on Saturday 13 November.

If you had a chance to catch Simon Mayo's Radio 2 Drivetime show from the backstage bar at the Roundhouse you would have heard all the pre-gig gossip as well as live performances including Rumer singing a spellbinding version of Elton's Rocket Man, and Lissie performing Stairway to Heaven, both of which are available to listen to online.

Bob Harris's aftershow programme on Saturday night was the ideal way to reflect on the three spellbinding yet diverse gigs, which included live interviews with Lulu and Nell Brydon, both giving their verdicts on the performances. The audiences loved the memorabilia exhibition at the Roundhouse, and many fans have sent in pictures of their artefacts which are currently displayed on the Radio 2 website.

In case you missed any of the gigs, you can listen again on the Radio 2 web site (and in glorious HD Sound on the Electric Proms site) and watch on the red button. The Robert Plant and Neil Diamond concerts will be broadcast on BBC 2 on November 6 and 13 respectively.

Like the collaborations on-stage, the Electric Proms partnership between Radio Two and BBC Two gave both viewers and listeners a wholly unique experience. This is the first year that Radio 2 has programmed the concerts, and I'm proud of the efforts of Jeff Smith, Radio 2's Head of Music and his live music team in pulling off a stunning first Radio 2 Electric Proms.

Bob Shennan is Controller of BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music

Jeff Smith, head of Music at Radio 2 and 6 Music, wrote about the Radio 2 Electric Proms (and has responded to some comments from listeners) on the About the BBC blog.
The concerts were reviewed by many, including The FT, The NME and The Guardian.
The picture shows Robert Plant during his performance on Friday.

HD sound for the Electric Proms

2010-10-27T17:04:41+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/electricproms/2010/

You may have heard that we offered an extra high quality (320kbs AAC) online audio stream for the last week of the BBC Proms this year (read about the experiment on the BBC Internet blog). The feedback we received was almost universally good. Listeners really appreciated the richer sound quality which made a fairly obvious difference even to the casual listener. Well, I can now confirm that for the first time for non-classical output, we'll offer the same higher quality audio stream for this year's BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms concerts.

So if you listen to the concerts live via the Electric Proms web site you'll hear our highest ever audio stream quality. We'll also offer the full concerts on-demand in HD Sound, again exclusively via the Electric Proms site. If your connection cannot handle this new higher quality, you can choose to listen at the standard quality.

We chose to pilot HD Sound with the Electric Proms because these live concerts represent something unique, something you can't get elsewhere. Radio 2's Head of Music, Jeff Smith, has written a post for the About the BBC blog in which he explains the unique nature of this annual event. Of course, once we've assessed feedback from listeners and looked at the technical and cost aspects, we'll look to extend this improvement to other services.

Why is this important? Well with the growth of music streaming services such as We7, Spotify, Last.fm and of course YouTube, an increasing number of people are hooking up their home computers to high quality sound systems and speakers, meaning that what was previously acceptable in terms of sound quality for small computer speakers or cheap headphones is rapidly becoming less so.

As more and more people start to listen to music via internet streams, as opposed to listening from CDs or from downloaded audio files, we expect that it will sound at least as good. Similarly, as more people start to listen to radio online, both live and on-demand, we are way past the point where people will readily accept poor audio quality simply because it's being delivered over the internet.

So, if you're a fan of Elton John, Robert Plant or Neil Diamond, listen live or catch-up via the Electric Proms site. As Robert Plant once said, the song remains the same; it'll just sound better now.

Chris Kimber is Managing Editor at BBC Audio & Music Interactive

Read more about HD Sound in this blog post about the Radio 3 experiment and this FAQ.
The artists performing at the 2010 BBC Radio 2 Electric Proms are Robert Plant, Elton John and Neil Diamond. All the details are on the web site.
The picture shows two souvenir Neil Diamond figurines, submitted by Radio 2 listener Kathleen Mosley from Montrose in Scotland. View hundreds of other items of memorabilia on the Electric Proms web site.

Live music and BBC radio - welcome to the Radio Blog

2010-09-22T11:00:00+00:00

Welcome to the new BBC Radio Blog where I and others will be making regular posts on a wide range of topics affecting the national radio stations and music programmes across the BBC. It is a chance to hear directly from myself and the team, and, like the best speech radio, we hope to provoke debate and reaction. Please do leave comments and suggest topics that we should cover.

September in the BBC Broadcasting House HQ is a time when we reflect on the BBC Proms season as well as on our coverage of a host of other festivals and outside broadcasts such as coverage of the Mercury Awards. For many of our teams, it is a momentary pause as they move into a busy autumn of live music featuring such delights as the London Jazz Festival and the Radio 2 Electric Proms, both of which announced their 2010 line-ups last week.

The global boom in live music is a well-documented phenomenon that has continued to buck recessionary trends. The latest PRS for Music Economics report (PDF) showed that after passing recorded music sales in the UK in 2008, live music receipts grew to Â£1.537bn in 2009, up 9.4%. Recorded music revenues were flat at Â£1.357bn in the same period. Of course, much has been written about the unique power of communal live events in an increasingly virtual world. Certainly, while I would naturally champion BBC radio and TV as an outstanding way to enjoy live performance, of course there is something special about hearing and seeing the drama unfold live at the event itself. That is why our commitment to supporting an incredibly wide range of live music across multiple genres and sustaining our hours of coverage will be central to my time in this job.

The success of the BBC Proms in achieving record ticket sales in 2010 was reported recently and the festival is perhaps benefitting from the overall trend, although it is dominated by pop music statistics. But I suspect that something deeper is at play. Indeed within the live music numbers there is some evidence that receipts are moving to the biggest pop superstars, while overall sales may be softening. The FT reported a 17% fall in ticket sales in the top 100 tours in the US in the first half of 2010. With this in mind, it makes our spirits soar when we hear that the Proms sold 92% of tickets to over 70 concerts in a venue of over 5000 people.

Personally I think two factors may be at play beyond a general trend towards live. Both of them could suggest that a sustained resurgence beyond pop music may be symbolic of deeper changes:

Firstly, the relative calm of a classical concert is something that I sense that people are beginning to yearn for. To be forced to switch off the smart phone and just absorb something of long lasting resonance, be it of beauty or powerful impact, is curiously precious in an age when instantaneous reaction (tweet, text or instant message) is the norm. Taking it slow is becoming a fast growth sector.

Secondly, I sense a growing but quiet rebellion against the desire to be confined to a fixed playlist or automated recommendations. Of course brilliant algorithms can work wonders for a web service, but when it comes to live performance, or indeed radio stations or museums, we put our trust in great curators and controllers and simply let them take us on a journey. It is this trust in an audience that marks out the great editorial leaders. I think that audiences trust BBC Proms Director Roger Wright and the Proms team. They are hungry to be taken beyond the familiar, to learn and be inspired. I know that by going to see something familiar, I may also make a memorable discovery. Personally, I remember arriving to see Prom 23 looking forward to The Lark Ascending and then getting bowled over by a inspirational work by the little known early 20th century composer John Foulds.

I hope that if you are not a regular fan of classical music or jazz, you may take the chance this autumn of putting your trust in those who are blessed with an innate ability to take us away from the addictive small screen and into a world of more profound discoveries: just click one of the links below and enjoy a concert from a BBC Performing Group or a jazz concert in the next few weeks. Of course, if you can't get to one, BBC radio will be there to broadcast much of what you miss.

Tim Davie is Director of Audio & Music at the BBC

There is still plenty to listen to and watch on the Proms web site, including clips of Dame Judi Dench, Simon Rattle and the Last Night. You can also browse the Proms archive for details of what was played at every Prom back to the festival's founding in 1895.
The London Jazz Festival web site has a full programme of performances (Friday 12 - Sunday 21 November).
The photograph shows Paul Lewis, star of the 2010 Proms. (c) Simon Jay Price.