Different cities, different participants, different ideas: Since 1998 each individual Red Bull Music Academy has had its own flow. Sixty participants from more than 30 countries will make the jubilee event a highlight of the series from September 23.
The output of the Red Bull Music Academy, which has been held yearly since 1998, isn’t a diploma, isn’t a chart-suitable best-of CD, a “new pop idol.” The output of the Red Bull Music Academy is: goose bumps. Because at the encounter of music enthusiasts from all continents, cultures and musical styles, something unplanned is created – a flirt, a beat, a party, a rhythm, a creative bang, a friendship, a band, an enlightenment. Or in short: music.
Scene gurus as lecturers
“Time moves differently during the academy,” is how one participant describes his experience. “It's not just a sense of moments speeding by, in a blur of new experiences in a foreign city. It's not even the fact that you might meet an inspirational hero of yours, or squeeze three once-in-a-lifetime meetings with a musical legend into the space of a week. In the studios, we become sculptors of time, molding drums, dubs, and melodies back and forth to create realtime atmospheres for the dance floors.”
Stations on all continents
After Berlin, Dublin, New York, London, Sao Paulo, Cape Town, Rome, Seattle and Melbourne, Toronto will host the Red Bull Music Academy. In two rounds each lasting a fortnight participants will fiddle about in workshops and studio sessions together with prominent lecturers on beats and sounds from September 23 and from October 13 – and will experience, as another partaker explains in his blog, “late night recording sessions, snapping strings, comfy bar stools, new perspectives and non-stop music nerdisms.”
Info sessions as preparation
Befitting the anniversary, the tenth Red Bull Music Academy wants to turn the volume dial up particularly high. For the first time, the academy will be the highlight and main focus of a series of “mini academies:” the Red Bull Music Academy info sessions, which have taken place over the last eight months in numerous countries all over the world. And for the first time, the public will be able to attend DJ workshops and public lectures in the Festival Hub personally – and in this way, perhaps absorb some good tips for their own home recordings.
Listening to the academy
In addition, enthusiasts will be able to convince themselves of the talent and ability of the 60 Red Bull Music Academy participants in other ways: at numerous club concerts in Toronto, on Red Bull Music Academy radio as well via podcasts on www.redbullmusicacademy.com.
