Month: October 2010

Lending of music CDs at UK libraries has plummeted by 42 per cent in the last five years, according to the latest survey from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA).
 
CIPFA’s annual survey of public libraries across the UK shows that library music issues has dropped from 8.4m in 2005-06 to 4.9m in 2009-10 – a drop of 42 per cent.
 
Book issues over the same period went down by just 4.2 per cent.
 
The survey also reveals a league table of the country’s most-visited libraries, topped by the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium library.
 
The Norwich-based library had 1,497,760 visitors in 2009–10, issuing 1,154,563 books and other items over twelve months. The next most visited library, Birmingham Central Library, attracted 1,452,150 visitors over the same period.
 
Chris Greene, CIPFA’s Head of Research and Statistics said:
 
“The UK’s libraries are as relevant to their communities as ever. But whilst many facilities continue to attract high visitor numbers, far fewer library users are borrowing music CDs compared to five years ago. With more people than ever downloading music from the internet, the way many people access music has changed fundamentally”.

The Contemporary Music Centre’s new music::new Ireland salon series
 

For its seventh series, CMC presents the ConTempo String Quartet as its residence artists for two evenings of new music::new Ireland. The new music::new Ireland salon series aims to encourage newcomers and enthusiasts alike to engage with the music of Irish composers. Each performance takes place in an informal atmosphere with dialogue encouraged between composers, performers and audience. In this series the ConTempo String Quartet and guest John Feeley (guitar) take a second glance at works written for them in recent years, which are housed in the CMC’s extensive library of scores in Fishamble Street.

Christmas FM, Ireland’s only dedicated Christmas radio station, today announced the return of its annual nationwide competition to discover the next great Irish Christmas song.  The charity radio station, which aims to raise €100,000 for Barnardos this year, has launched an appeal to Irish bands and songwriters to write a yuletide masterpiece that could appear on the station’s playlist alongside a host of classic Christmas themed hits.
 
“We are delighted to announce the return of our Christmas Song contest for 2010.  The contest proved hugely popular with songwriters and Christmas FM listeners alike in 2009, with over 100 musicians submitting entries. We have a wealth of songwriting talent in Ireland, as evident by the high standard of entries for last year’s contest. We’re hoping that this Christmas, Irish musicians will come up trumps once again and support Barnardos by crafting a cracker of a song!”, said Walter Hegarty, Technical Director for Christmas FM.
 
In 2009, Christmas FM’s song contest attracted over 100 original entries and thousands of listener SMS text and website votes.  The winning entry, ‘This Christmas’ by Kildare band Funzo, proved a huge hit with Christmas FM listeners, with the six piece band racing to victory with 40% of the listener vote.
 
Irish artists are asked to submit their Christmas compositions online in mp3 format, through the Christmas FM website at www.christmasfm.ie. The closing date for entries is Sunday 28th November. A panel of Irish music industry experts will review all entries before the final shortlist is announced and playlisted by Christmas FM during the second week of broadcast in early December. The winner will be chosen by Christmas FM listeners, with proceeds from SMS text votes going to Barnardos.
 
The overall winner of the contest will be given the opportunity to professionally record the song, receive €500 in vouchers and will be playlisted on Christmas FM for the duration of broadcast. The winning entry will also be released online as a charity Christmas single with all proceeds being donated to Barnardos.
 
On air 24 hours a day from late November to the end of December, Christmas FM will return in an expanded format this year, broadcasting throughout Dublin and Cork and for the first time Galway, Limerick and the South East. The charity station hopes to raise over €100,000 for Barnardos, its dedicated charity partner for 2010.  Christmas FM is proudly supported by the EBS Building Society and the Irish Daily Mail.
 
For more details on Christmas FM and the Christmas FM Song Contest please visit www.christmasfm.ie

"Reflections" (NV5835)

Monday November 1st,   1 – 2 pm
Room IW2 42
(2ND floor Seminar Room, Irish World Academy Building)
 

What is a Musically ‘Creative’ City?
Adam Krims, Professor of Music Analysis, University of Nottingham
 
"Urban geographers and urban planners have, for decades, touted music (as well as other arts) as a way to regenerate cities economically and culturally, using the notion of the ‘creative city’ to frame such notion; and yet, music scholars have not become involved in the debates surrounding such urban planning. More recently, a great deal of skepticism has arisen, especially within academic communities, concerning the notion of ‘creativity’ and to what extent it is a useful concept in studying and shaping cities (e.g., Pratt 2008, Martin and Sunley 2003). Often borrowing some of its prestige from the related but still distinct notion of a knowledge-based economy (van Heur 2010), the notion of a ‘creative city’ remains an issue of attraction and debate, even, as Pratt and others have pointed out, in the absence of any concrete notion of what ‘creativity’ even means. My paper will examine this issue and attempt to concretize the notion of ‘creativity’ with respect, specifically, to music, and to attach the notion to issues of cities and urban location. Borrowing from Storper and Veneble’s (2004) identification of the kinds of learning that depend on “F2F” contact, I argue that music learning represents a particularly salient case. While one need not be quite as skeptical as Evans (2009) about the viability of stimulating urban musical creativity, some of these particular characteristics of music learning, and the heightened dependence on locational variables, suggest that the particulars of musical creativity require attention to particular characteristics of musical learning."
 

Adam Krims is Professor of Music Analysis at the University of Nottingham. He specialises in urban geography and recent music history. He has also published on critical theory, cultural theory, and African-American musics, including hip-hop. He is author of Music and Urban Geography (Routledge, 2007), as well as Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2000). He has contributed to Music Analysis, Nineteenth-Century Music, and numerous other journals and essay collections, urban change, music theory, and political economy.
 
All welcome.  Please rsvp: ellen.byrne@nullul.ie  

Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
University of Limerick
Limerick

Gerry O'Beirne and Rosie Shipley are proud to announce the release of their duo album

THE SUGAR CLUB
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 5th

Who would have thought it, but apart from a show last summer in the Odessa Club The Walls have not done a Dublin gig since they played The Village back in 2005.

The band have been keeping a low profile in Ireland for much of the past four years but have been buried away in their studio working on new music and a new visual-based live show that has taken the last two years to perfect.

Last summer the double A-sided single Carrying the Fire/Phantom Power gave a taster of things to come.
The Sugar Club will play host to the new show on Friday Nov 5th.

Irish Composers’ Collective presents
David Bremner – Piano

ELECTRONICA
Bank Holiday Weekender
Tripod
Harcourt Street
Oct 22nd – 24th 2010