Posts Tagged ‘Festival Previews’

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Lynn Ruth hits the UK

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

The irritatingly erudite Lynn Ruth Miller is back on tour, hardly stopping to breathe from her stint at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Hitting Glasgow, London and Brighton over the course of October, she brings with her three, laugh-filled shows:

Granny’s Gone Wild

Aging is Amazing… A Cabaret

Eat Your Heart Out, Joan Rivers

Recently turning 78, we’d like to wish the rising (but in no means aged) star a Happy Birthday.

Keep up to date with the details at www.lynnruthmiller.com or contact on 0790 6688 560

LynnRuthMiller1

Post by Hannah Van Den Bergh

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The REAL Truth Behind The Music

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

David Courtney Profile 2

The Truth Behind The Music Demo

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After making his name writing and producing music, David Courtney turns to the written word once again, although this time with a new concept: fusing audiobook and album to create a more telling form of autobiography. An idea he mulled over for months, Courtney wanted to make his life’s journey as entertaining as when he lived it, letting the words truly jump off the paper and embracing technology to intersperse his story with the music that shaped it.


Celebrity in his own right after working and writing with Leo Sayer, and innumerable others from Roger Daltrey to David Gilmore, Eric Clapton to Sir Paul McCartney, Courtney’s work features tracks that you will no doubt recognise, (and catch yourself subliminally humming along to), and others that will sing you into amniotic slumber.

DavidCourtney-TheTruthBehindtheMusic

Courtney mentions how daunting the experience of writing the piece was, sitting there with a blank piece of paper right at the very beginning. Although, very quickly finding complete enjoyment in trying on childhood memories and tracking the music that marked the event. The music, what Courtney calls his “time machine,” made it very easy to create structure chronologically, finding dusty tracks kept in boxes from the early rock bands of his youth.

Disbanding his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for early mornings putting pen to paper, Courtney totally immersed himself. Inspired by all-time classic, and favourite record, Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochran recorded in a garage in the 1950s but sounding as good today as the day it was made, Courtney truly gives this auto (or more fittingly, ‘audio’) -biography his own personal stamp.

With such a unique format, Courtney hopes to diversify and make the piece a business venture offered to other musicians to create their own stories within the same model. Or perhaps, take it on the road, hire out theatres and have a one-to-one with the audience. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see him at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, come 2012?

Listen back to the 14 September 2012 BBC Breakfast radio show to hear more about this fantastic new piece of writing.  Or purchase the audiobook now for only $12.00 (also available on iTunes).

David Courtney BMA

Post written by Hannah Van Den Bergh

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Leafleting is a blow to liberty!

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

logoRgdFestLogo

A most interesting article in the Guardian Newspaper today about leafleting.

Virtual Flyering at festivals is perhaps the way to go….

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How to promote a Festival/Fringe Show?

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

Ian Fox-1Small

I’ve just finished reading two rather interesting articles by the Manchester stand-up comedian, writer and photographer Ian Fox:  “How to produce a Free Festival Show” and “How to promote a Free Festival Show”.    With technology racing ahead in an ever fleeting present, it’s the past’s ability to harness thoughts snatched from experiences that allow us to plan future strategies.  Putting aside those thoughts  for the present, I await to read Ian’s follow-up  article on audience feedback.

In 2008 I interviewed the eminently talented Oliver Lansley who kindly gave us a lot of his valuable time in producing a particularly informative article about how he goes about promoting his show.   I also interviewed him for our series of 10 Questions and  learned a lot more about this charming young artist.

In the following years I interviewed the ingenious Dutch artist, Neel de Jong.  Linguistically accomplished I am not, but Neel embraced my questions with such gusto that I was in awe at her linguistic abilities.   Through her chosen medium of Dance, her dexterous exploration of “reality” clearly challenges her art.  Herein I saw another aspect of how artists have a natural leaning in the spacious embrace of the communicative arts.

It is always a pleasure interviewing artists;  they are utterly fascinating people with highly evolved communication skills.  Their ability to project this through the written word and expressive  movement shows their common ownership of the topical landscape and language.

While festivals and fringes world wide offer artists promotional bite-sized promos to promote their shows in that most tangible of forms, the festival brochure, one should not forget the free internet platform Festival Previews which welcomes artists worldwide to widen their promotional control by creating their own self-created web pages called, Virtual Flyers.  Here artists can upload their full press release, multiple press images, back links, video promo, collated reviews all aggregated onto one promotional page and use this to tweet to their own personal networks, media networks and twitter festival networks etc.

With independent media growing and mainstream media evolving from its traditional base, the formation of the Festival Media Network has begun to play an increasingly important role at the Edinburgh Festival, and especially the Fringe, where reviews and previews remain so integral but where more mainstream media coverage has been in decline for quite some time.

Last but not least I should give mention to a rather clever little book which was published way back in 2006 by James Aylett and James Lark.  Aptly called,   “Fringe: seeing it, doing it, surviving it – a complete guide to the Edinburgh Fringe“. This charming little book takes you on a youthfully comical yet informative journey.  I’ve always had it in mind to publish a review on the Amazon website but I’ve been somewhat amiss with other demands on my time.  Yes, this is a neat read!

So get the cerebral juices going in planning and promoting your next festival or fringe show;  we’re all out there to bring artists and the public together.

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iFringe is Launched – Reviews & Previews on the Go!

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Away back in those halcyon boom days of 2003 I read an article by Aaron Scullion called, Mobile video hits Edinburgh Festival.  Then called Pocket Video, the technology was certainly there but financially infeasible for us ordinary punters.

That was then but now, at last, the technology is here and financially feasible!  With less than a week to go to the start of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, iFringe is launched – the first ever guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the Apple iPhone and with our video content too  Here’s the press release:

Press Release dated 13th July 2009

iFringe

iFringe

EDINBURGH – With less than a month to the start of the Edinburgh Fringe, five of the city’s leading independent reviewers have joined forces, using new technology to plot a new course through the 2,000 shows on offer this August.

Local company FringeGuru, in association with ThreeWeeks, Broadway Baby, FringeReview and Festival Previews, is proud to present iFringe – the first-ever guide to the Edinburgh Festival for the Apple iPhone.  Bringing together reviews and video clips from all five sites, the brand-new technology shows different critics’ views side-by-side, eliminating the need to trawl websites and at last empowering busy Fringe-lovers to pick a great show on the move.

Making full use of the iPhone’s high-tech features, iFringe is an entirely new way to enjoy the best of the world’s largest arts festival.  Using the phone’s inbuilt GPS, iFringe links Fringe-goers with great shows about to start near to them – cutting through the confusion and enabling a spontaneous, interactive day, without hassle or fuss.  For those who prefer to plan ahead, iFringe downloads reviews to read at leisure, even learning the user’s own likes and dislikes.  And the iPhone’s high-speed 3G connection is perfect for multi-media, with over 100 videos from Festival Previews slated to appear in iFringe this year.

As well as the all-important reviews, iFringe features venue guides, mystery-shopper reports and up-to-date news, making it an all-in-one reference for a perfect Fringe.  And the Festival experience needn’t end at the theatre doors, as iFringe’s database of locally-recommended bars and restaurants helps the entertainment go on into the night.

A free version of iFringe gives Festival-goers the latest reviews at no cost, and for dedicated audience members, a full version of iFringe gives them all published reviews for just £2.99: less than half the cost of the average ticket. The initial response has been overwhelming, with hundreds of downloads in the first two weeks – some from places as far-flung as Brazil, Australia and China.  Working with many of the Festival’s biggest independent review magazines, iFringe looks set to achieve its mission: to guide the world’s Festival-lovers to the Fringe’s hidden gems.

iFringe.  Reviews on the go!

Testimonials:

“iFringe is sure to become an essential tool in the pocket of anyone who wants to get the most out of the ever-burgeoning programme.” Pete Shaw, Publisher of Broadway Baby

“We look forward to this becoming as essential a tool for ‘doing Edinburgh’ as the Fringe programme itself”. Chris Cooke, Co-Editor of Three Weeks

The iFringe is a step towards our ideal; combining the best in technology with the best in sustainability.” Paul Levy, Editor of Fringe Review

“iFringe is a very exciting iPhone application and we are very pleased that Festival Previews and our catalogue of Fringe video clips will be part of it.” Ian Smith, Publisher of Festival Previews

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