Central London welcomes Chinese New Year on Feb 21st

See acrobats, lion dancers and fireworks in the biggest celebrations outside China on Sunday, 21st February – and it’s completely free

Come to the area around Chinatown on Sunday, February 21st, to say 'Kung Hei Fatt Choy' to the Year of the Tiger with an afternoon of spectacular celebrations including fireworks, lion dancing, acrobatics and plenty of good food. It's bright; it's beautiful; it's family-friendly; it’s the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside China and it's completely free to attend.

The celebrations, organised by the London Chinatown Chinese Association, commence at midday with a stunning opening ceremony in Trafalgar Square, featuring world-class Chinese dance, music and acrobatics from two international performance troupes.  Next, the celebrations move into the streets of Chinatown, which will be specially adorned with festive Year of the Tiger decorations.  Chinese dragons, firecrackers and lion dancing under the bright red lanterns of Gerrard Street – the perfect location to refuel with authentic, great-value Chinese cuisine - will keep visitors entertained for hours. 

The cultural journey continues along Shaftesbury Avenue, which will be turned into 'Hong Kong in London Chinatown' for the afternoon.  Here, local London Chinese artists will take centre stage and cultural stalls will line the streets for visitors to pick up some special Chinese treats. After dark, make sure you don’t miss the colourful fireworks display in Leicester Square which will close the New Year Celebrations with even more colour, noise and vibrancy. 

This free event is a real highlight of the London calendar and an exciting, family-friendly day out for locals and visitors alike. Last year, hundreds of thousands enjoyed the Chinese New Year festival and this year, organiser London Chinatown Chinese Association aims to welcome even more. To find out more about the day’s events, plus the background and history of Chinese New Year, visit www.chinatownlondon.org.

Grace Jones announces special one off show
at London’s Royal Albert Hall

European debut of collaboration with oscar ® winning costume designer and acclaimed production designer Eiko Ishioka

Monday 26 April 2010

** Tickets on sale Monday 8th February – 9am **

The diva that defined and continues to define the pop landscape today announces a special show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Monday 26th April 2010. Off the back of her sell-out 2009 Hurricane tour and rapturous festival sweep, Grace and her creative team have evolved the production to include new fashion undertones, breathtaking lasers and spectacular sets all to create a sensory and sonic utopia.

Collaborating with Oscar ® winning costume and production designer Eiko Ishioka, Grace debuted her new production at the Hollywood Bowl in Summer 2009. The London show marks the European debut for her groundbreaking collaboration.

A week after the show, Grace opens a unique collaboration with groundbreaking light artist, Chris Levine. Entitled Stillness at the Speed of Light, these sensational portraits will go on show from 29th April 2010 at The Vinyl Factory Gallery in Poland Street, London.

Ticketing Details

020 7589 8212 / www.royalalberthall.com
0871 230 5595 / www.kililive.com

Proud Presents

Record contract and prize money up for grabs in the hottest unsigned musical talent competition

With a highly desired prize, the best musicians in the country and the exclusively public vote, this is a battle of the bands like no other.

Proud Camden is giving unsigned musicians a reason to celebrate with the re-launch of Proud Presents from Tuesday 20th April. The platform for undiscovered hopefuls is to be a monthly fixture at the legendary venue, which in recent months hosted household names including Florence and the Machine, Sting and Babyshambles.

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'Coalition of the Willing'

'Coalition of the Willing' is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a 'post Copenhagen' world.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ is being crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world’s top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island.

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Cabinets of Curiosity, an arts & theatre company, would like to announce their latest production, commencing February 08th in London, Five Clever Courtesans -  a fun and feisty new play that  brings to life five strong, independent women from different times and places.

Spiers and Boden

The Point, Eastleigh - fast becoming a favoured venue for folk music followers - is delighted to welcome twice winners of BBC Radio 2 folk awards Spiers and Boden to the venue this season.

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A Lot of Success for ‘A Bit of Tom Jones?’

Independent Welsh breakout film A Bit of Tom Jones?, which was made on a budget of just £100,000, was given a gala screening in London’s Leicester Square last night, thanks to the support of Vue® Entertainment.

Competing against megabucks movies such as AVATAR, which itself cost almost £200 million to make, the success story of indie flick A Bit of Tom Jones? provides hope for independent film-makers by gaining the backing of Vue, one of the UK’s largest cinema operators.

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ANIMATED EXETER LIGHTS UP CITY LANDMARK TO LAUNCH INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL

HISTORIC Exeter Castle will be lit up with jaw-dropping animation to celebrate the launch of this year’s Animated Exeter film festival (11th – 20th February). Funded by Arts Council England, South West, internationally acclaimed US artist Rose Bond has created a breath-taking piece that uses the Castle as the giant backdrop for a swipe at injustice, class and punishment

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PICK UP A PICROSS IN 3D!

Prepare your mind for a puzzling mental work-out, as Picross 3D comes to the Nintendo DS on 5 March 2010. Whether the puzzle solver within you prefers logic tasks or quick thinking conundrums, there will be something in Picross 3D for you.

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SALES ROBUST IN A TRANSITIONAL YEAR FOR
THE BRITISH VIDEO INDUSTRY

New figures on the home entertainment market, released today by the British Video Association (BVA) using data from the Official Charts Company, reveal that video home entertainment has weathered the recessionary storm in 2009, with December unit sales up 1.8% on the same time in 2008, giving the market a traditional seasonal boost.

Q4 sales volumes increased 83% on the previous quarter and were only 3.0% lower than the same period in 2008, when Woolworths and Zavvi were still trading.  The closure of these two chains last December, which together represented 13% of the market, severely hit the following first quarter video sales in 2009, as it did other entertainment sectors.  Since spring the decline has levelled out and the BVA anticipates seeing overall growth return in 2010.  This is expected to come from the increasing digital market and from Blu-ray discs, as HD-ready TVs are forecast to rise from 58% of UK TV households in 2009 to 72% this year, boosted by HD TV coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in June.

Sales of Blu-ray discs increased 123% year-on-year to 8.4 million units, demonstrating the increasing strength in demand for the high-definition home entertainment format, and made up 3.4% of total video sales.  However in Q4 the high-definition format made up a higher proportion of new release disc sales than ever before, with Blu-ray accounting for 26% of District 9 sales, 23% of Terminator Salvation sales and 22% of Inglourious Basterds and Star Trek 11.   Since their launch 13 million Blu-ray discs have sold. 

Simon Heller, Blu-ray Partners Campaign Director of the BVA, says:
“The BVA’s 2009 Q4 campaign targeted households with an HD-ready TV to explain that the best way to get the most out of your HD-TV is to watch content on Blu-ray.  Bolt-on technology such as a Blu-ray player is a fraction of the cost of the HD-TV itself, yet it is only this that gives you the ultimate 1080p high-definition experience - with five times the picture quality – that your HD-TV is designed for.  With hardware prices falling to the £100 mark, 2010 is the year to make the most of your home entertainment technology.” 

Stand alone Blu-ray player sales rose 158% to the end of November, which the BVA estimates could bring total sales in 2009 to over 600,000.

Rising popularity of Blu-ray was offset by a 7.3% year-on-year decline in DVD sales.  DVDs account for 96.3% of the home entertainment video retail market, meaning total sales of video have dipped 5.6% to 243.5 million units from 257.9 million in 2008. 

Lavinia Carey, Director General of the British Video Association says:
“The home entertainment industry has come through the recession fighting and rallied in the run up to Christmas.  DVD sales are down 5.6% due to several factors, including the effects of copyright theft and the changing retail landscape.  Careful shoppers have benefitted from the fantastic promotional offers last year but the loss of Woolworths’ and Zavvi’s 900-odd stores meant that the 13% market-share they jointly represented, worth around £300 million, has been slow to replace, particularly given the high propensity of Woolworths shoppers to buy on impulse. ”

While DVDs, and increasingly Blu-ray discs, remain the most popular formats on which to view video, consumers are progressively trying new formats within the digital market, such as paid-for ‘downloads to own,’ reflecting an exciting transitional period for the video industry.

Lavinia Carey explains:
“It is an exciting time for consumers, especially as new technological developments are announced every week, offering people more choice than ever when deciding how to view video at home or on the move. Furthermore, it suggests that although sales of DVDs have dipped, Blu-ray and digital formats are beginning catch on.”

 Mike Brown, Head of Technology at the BVA adds:
“Monitoring online digital transactions in the future will be crucial for both distributors and retailers as they need the information to plan future sales and investment strategies. As the rights owners’ trade body, the BVA is the driving force uniting the industry and encouraging them to provide the data to form the digital sales and rental charts.”

In the meantime, demand for stand up comedy titles grew by 2%, proving that the nation has not lost its sense of humour, children’s titles grew by 1.4% over the year and music video sales ended the year up an impressive 14.1%, boosted by demand for product following Michael Jackson’s death and a new Take That release – The Circus Live, which sold 574,000 units in December.

JAZZ, FOLK AND WORLD MUSIC AT TOWN HALL AND SYMPHONY HALL BIRMINGHAM: WINTER/SPRING 2010

Futurist folk group The Imagined Village, Judeo-Spanish songstress Yasmin Levy, leading UK jazz star Courtney Pine OBE and legendary South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela performing with the CBSO are amongst the highlights at Town Hall and Symphony Hall Birmingham in winter and spring 2010 – underlining the halls’ firm commitment to present a wide ranging and accessible programme, showcasing the very best in jazz, folk and world music.

JAZZ

Town Hall Birmingham welcomes the Jan Garbarek Group on 29 January - Rainer Bruninghaus on keyboards, Yuri Daniel on bass and special guest and Indian master percussionist Trilok Gurtu join the defining voice of European jazz, Jan Garbarek, in his first concert in Birmingham for six years.

Town Hall Associate Artists the BBC Big Band featuring guest vocalist Ian Shaw will evoke the era of easy listening with a show dedicated to the timeless songs of Burt Bacharach and Henry Mancini on Friday 12 February at the Grade I listed concert hall. On 3 March, leading UK jazz star Courtney Pine returns with pianist Zoe Rahman and electric violinist Omar Puente amongst others, to perform Transition in Tradition, his critically acclaimed and widely influenced homage to the world’s first great saxophone star Sidney Bechet.

The music of Duke Ellington including Cotton Club classics and reprisals of The Nutcracker and Peer Gynt suites, will be celebrated at Town Hall Birmingham on 12 March by star vocalist Jaki Graham and the BBC Big Band, led by the irrepressible Jiggs Whigham.

At Symphony Hall Birmingham on 19 April, inimitable smoky voiced jazz and blues singer-songwriter Melody Gardot performs from her critically acclaimed 2009 release of My One and Only Thrilland 2008 debut album Worrisome Heart, which was completed after recovery from a near fatal accident and led to comparisons with contemporaries such as Norah Jones and Madeleine Peyroux.

The BBC Big Band complete their third performance of the winter and spring programme with A Tribute to Louis and Ella, featuring Australian trumpet virtuoso James Morrison and BBC Jazz Award winning vocalist Anita Wardell performing classic tracks by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald at Town Hall Birmingham on 23 April.

FOLK

Futurist folk group The Imagined Village and their collective multi-cultural take on English identity and music open an eclectic and varied season of folk on 21 January at Town Hall Birmingham, followed by perennial US folk legend Tom Paxton performing at the venue on 25 January, still producing both starkly beautiful and light-hearted music well into his seventh decade and having received a 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy during the 51st Annual GRAMMY Awards.

Transatlantic Sessions, both the centrepiece of the Celtic Connections festival and an acclaimed BBC4 TV series, will offer up an incredible line-up of eighteen singers and musicians, including Eddi Reader, Cara Dillon, Tim O’Brien and Danny Thompson in a memorable evening of Irish, Scottish and Americana inspired music at Symphony Hall Birmingham on Friday 5 February.

Grammy award winning folk singer and social activist Judy Collins, who catapulted to success with 1967 album Wildflowers will perform classic songs drawn from over 40 years in music on 7 February at Town Hall Birmingham, whilst Fleet Foxes label-mates and Texan lo-fi explorers Midlake perform material from trad-folk inspired third album The Courage of Others at the concert hall on 16 February.

A UK tour by US country and pop singer songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman takes in a performance at Town Hall Birmingham on 27 February, bringing the sound of Texas and Nashville direct to Birmingham, before Fairport Convention, proud recipients of BBC Radio 2’s ‘Most Influential Folk Album of All Time’ as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award, visit Town Hall Birmingham on 6 March for the third time since the much loved venue reopened in 2007.

Worldwide musical heroes The Dubliners return to Birmingham for a moving St Patrick’s Day concert at Town Hall on 17 March. Soon to enter their fifth decade on the road, the Irish folk group – who boasted Jimi Hendrix and Roy Orbison amongst their high profile fans - return for their first show at the venue since the 1990s.

An all-star line-up of British folk stars in Feast of Fiddles will perform at Town Hall Birmingham on 5 April as part of their 17th spring tour counting Phil Beer, Garry Blakeley, Ian Cutler, Tom Leary, Chris Leslie, Peter Knight and Brian McNeill amongst their numbers for an evening of solo performances, stirring ensembles and musical entertainment.

WORLD

Future world music superstar Judeo-Spanish songstress Yasmin Levy visits Town Hall Birmingham on 10 February with her Sentir tour. A captivating vocalist, Levy sings in the moving romantic tradition of Ladino, a 15th century language of Sephardic culture blended with Andalusian flamenco.

Later in the month, on Saturday 20 February Town Hall Birmingham will resound to the work of minimalist US composer Steve Reich as acclaimed percussionist Colin Currie leads seven musicians performing the dramatic Ghanaian-influenced Drumming, a tapestry of pounding bongo drums, marimba, glockenspiels and female vocals bringing the Town Hall Drumming Day to a close, which also includes an earlier family concert and a pre-concert talk.

The Mother India weekend, a journey through the musical heritage of Mother India in the company of a range of Indian musical masters, will take place at both Town Hall and Symphony Hall from 9 to 11 April. The weekend will feature a rare UK recital from santoor maestro and living legend Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, a collaboration between sarod players Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash and cellist Matthew Barley as well as a re-visioning of cinematic classic Mother India by British-Asian artist DJ Tigerstyle and a handful of freestage events including the launch of Asian chill series Mid-day Mantra, a new free monthly Saturday lunchtime series.  

Legendary South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela will appear at Symphony Hall Birmingham on 7 May for a unique collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Town Hall Gospel Choir and City of Birmingham Young Voices for whom he has written a new work, as well as performing Jason Yarde’s Trumpet Concerto.

Further jazz, folk and world music highlights at Town Hall and Symphony Hall in 2010 include the third annual English Originals – a weekend celebrating the diversity of English music from traditional folk to contemporary singer-songwriters - at both venues from 14-16 May.  There’s soulful and gospel-infused folk-blues from Eric Bibb at Town Hall on 27 May followed by Ukulelescope on Saturday 5 June, a collaborative project between the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the British Film Institute and part of the Town Hall ‘Vintage Silents’ weekend celebrating music and movies from the silver screen era.

Windfest 2010 dates confirmed!

The UK’s biggest free watersports and extreme sports festival - The Animal Windfest - will return to Dorset for its 12th consecutive year in 2010. So pleased were the organisers with 2009’s event that they’ve already started planning its successor, and this year the date has been confirmed as 10 – 12 September.

Last year, the three-day festival attracted an estimated 15,000 people to its spiritual home of Sandbanks in Poole. In 2010 – expect all the great activities you saw last time out… and much, much more!

For example, the kitesurfing course racing will return, but this time it’ll become part of the UK national series, adding a level of competition that’s sure to see things getting lively! The big coup, however, is in the windsurfing, where the British National Freestyle Championships will be returning to the event after a few years away, so expect some of the biggest and best tricks in the business to be coming to UK shores!

Organiser, Gary Willingham, says: “Obviously, we were really pleased with how last year’s Animal Windfest went, but we’re not ones to rest on our laurels. Every year we try to think of new and interesting ways to make the event even better.

“All our brainstorming sessions for the 2010 event get us more and more excited. Hopefully between now and 10 September the ideas will keep on flowing and Windfest fans will see an even more incredible show next time. I can’t wait!”

MAYOR BORIS JOHNSON ENCOURAGES PEOPLE TO ‘GET INTO LONDON THEATRE’ THIS JANUARY

• Over 55 top London shows
• 1000s of discount theatre tickets
• FREE activities and exclusive workshops
• Get into London Theatre from 1 January-12 February 2010

New Year’s resolutions can now be more fun as Get into London Theatre (GILT) offers unbelievable ticket deals to over 55 top London shows, giving you the perfect GILT-free excuse to try something different and enjoy the magic of London theatre in 2010.  This year, the promotion is bigger and better than ever and appeals to theatre fans of all ages.  With a record-breaking 20,000 tickets already sold, this is an offer you cannot afford to miss so book today at www.getintolondontheatre.co.uk for amazing ticket deals, exclusive workshops and free activities from 1 January to 12 February 2010.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson says; 'In the first wintry weeks of the year, Get into London Theatre is a brilliant fillip. With discounts to fantastic shows plus theatre workshops, it's a terrific sampler of what makes London the theatre capital of the world.  And after the curtain comes down take your cue - explore the amazing variety of London's stages from the big West End shows to the smaller theatres around the city.'

With Get into London Theatre there’s something for everyone as tickets are available at £10, £15, £25 and £35 for a choice of musicals, plays, opera, dance and entertainment.  The sensational selection of shows include popular musicals Billy Elliot The Musical, Jersey Boys, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Sister Act, and plays such as The 39 Steps, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

New for 2010, you will have the unique chance to embrace your creativity through a range of activities and workshops, including acting, singing and dance classes run by West End professionals exclusively for adults.  Plus, don’t miss the opportunity to take part in a free Theatreland Walking Tour or discover the secrets of some of London’s most iconic theatres.

It’s not too late to book tickets, log on now to www.getintolondontheatre.co.uk or call the Get into London Theatre ticket hotline on 0871 230 1548 and make it a spectacular start to the new decade.