Olivia PowellMusic Beyond Mainstream, a consortium of UK regional concert halls collaborating to programme and produce tours, has teamed up with Music Venue Trust to participate in the #saveourvenues campaign, which offers support to the UK’s grassroots music venues.
Music Beyond Mainstream has 12 partner venues of over 1100 capacity who are all committed to’ artistically ambitious programmes’.
One venue is the 1640 capacity Sage Gateshead, home to the UK’s only full-time chamber orchestra Royal Northern Sinfonia. In 2014, the organisation led on producing a collaboration for Music Beyond Mainstream between American singer-songwriter John Grant and Royal Northern Sinfonia. The show saw John Grant paired with the 34-piece chamber orchestra for a UK tour.
A film of this concert has now been made available to stream this coming Friday (12 June) to raise funds for the #saveourvenues campaign, which has to date raised over £2m towards helping grassroots venues.
Ten of the Music Beyond Mainstream venues will be streaming the concert simultaneously from their Facebook pages at 8pm on 12 June.
The venues involved are:
- Sage Gateshead
- THSH Birmingham
- Bristol Colston Hall
- Edinburgh Usher Hall
- Liverpool Philharmonic
- Manchester Bridgewater Hall
- Nottingham Royal Concert Hall
- Poole Lighthouse
- The Anvil, Basingstoke
- London, Southbank Centre
The concert will be free to view but donations can be made to #saveourvenues via the campaign’s main fundraising page.
Beverley Whitrick, Strategic Director of Music Venue Trust, said: “We hugely appreciate this act of solidarity from Music Beyond Mainstream, who recognise that all venues are part of a live music ladder, that sees artists start their careers in grassroots venues before progressing onto larger stages. Their help and generosity is very much appreciated by the many venues we represent. We would particularly like to thank the team at Sage Gateshead for making this remarkable archive performance available to the #saveourvenues campaign.”
Tamsin Austin, Associate Director of Programming at Sage Gateshead said: “Covid-19 is challenging every aspect of the music sector. Musicians’ livelihoods are at risk and venues large and small are in peril of closure because of financial challenges. It is important that all this sector makes it through this crisis. We made this wonderful show with one of our all-time favourite artists, several years ago, as a group of larger UK venues in the network Music Beyond Mainstream (MBM). In streaming this show for free, we would like to encourage you to donate, if you feel able, to the Music Venues Trust crisis fund. This fund is set up to support grass roots venues across the country. These grass roots venues are crucial to us as larger venues, just as they are to musicians and audiences across the country and create our rich live music scene. If you can donate to the fund, it will help secure a grass roots venue near you. #saveourvenues.”