Now in its third year, BBC Electric Proms has expanded taking place in London and Liverpool from October 22 – 26th.
The festival is dedicated to creating new moments in music and boasts an amazing array of artists from household names to complete unknowns;
Burt Bacharach opens the festival with the BBC Concert Orchestra and guest vocalists Adele, Beth Rowley and Jamie Cullum; Oasis perform with The Crouch End Festival Chorus. Razorlight and Keane will be debuting new material; Goldfrapp perform a stripped down show against a specially designed set and there’s a special Saturday Night Fever event to mark its 30 anniversary featuring Robin Gibb and Sam Sparro.
Also in London but just south of the river is a brand new snow sports and music event called FS04 Freeze. The iconic Battersea Power Station will be transformed into a ski resort featuring the biggest real snow jump ever made in the UK .The music is headlined by SoCal’s Cypress Hill for their only UK appearance; other acts include The Automatic, The Cuban Brothers and DJ Annie Mac.
The annual CMJ Music Marathon takes place in New York from October 21-25 and KCRW will be there - we’re co sponsoring the CMJ Artist Loft at the Red Bull Space with Paste and Indie Outlaw featuring The Boat People and Delta Spirit amongst others. There’ll be a chance to win festival badges so keep an eye out for the CMJ page on KCRW.com .
And lastly we head down under to Sydney for the Music Viva event.
The roots of this classical music festival lie with the Romanian violinist Richard Goldner who arrived in Australia in 1939 as a WWII refugee and later established a small orchestra which became the Sydney Musica Viva.
This year the Musica Viva Festival features Israel’s Jerusalem Quartet, Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, , New Yorks Julliard String Quartet plus a number of antipodean performers such as Ian Munro and the Australian String Quartet.