This is what a minnow looks like. Many congratulations to Oliver, Todd, Joe, Clarissa of the Vortex who have just been nominated alongside HUGE promoters as:
Live Promotion Team of the Year in the MusicWeek awards. Here is the list of nominees:
AEG Live
Beyond
Live Nation
New Vortex Jazz Club
SJM Concerts
Quoting the release: “This year’s awards take place on May 24 at The Roundhouse in Camden where PPL chairman and CEO Fran Nevrkla will receive The Strat in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the music industry.”
Story from Musicweek
Categories: miscellaneous
That is absolutely brilliant! Great for Oliver and his team – to have the Vortex selected for the Music Week shortlist is recognition which is richly deserved for all the efforts put in to maintain the Vortex's incredibly high quality and diverse live jazz programme – in a comfortably small venue and at prices which will not put off the punters. Just look at what the Vortex has got coming up in the next couple of months! That says it all.
Many congratulations to the Vortex and the programming team there. Nice that excellence in programming is recognised and can compete with the 'big boys' on the music scene.
It is quite a thrill to be nominated especially as it recognises the Vortex as a promoter as much as a venue. In other words, that we are taking risks to put on these concerts. I did some calculations recently and worked out that we have just over the equivalent of 2 full time paid staff to look after 300+ concerts a year. No-one else is paid and we have over 100 volunteers on our list. I worked out that the volunteers alone are worth over £80,000. Without them, the club wouldn't be there. It's only main grant is £12,000 from PRS Foundation.
Not that I would want this model to be the one on which the whole scene has to survive, of course.
It is quite mind-blowing to see whom we are up against – AEG runs the O2 Arena, Live Nation do the live concerts for Madonna and Jay-Z! Their turnover is over $4 billion. Ours is around £250,000.
And all credit to the judges of the Music Week Awards for not forgetting the importance of those at the sharp end.
But it shows that the approach that jazz takes – using partnership and community to work with the musicians – has a great validity in this world. This co-operation helps it to survive, even if at all too low a level at times.
Now we have to work out if it's worth going to the dinner – over £200 a ticket. Actually, Marine Ices are great and also do excellent pasta. So perhaps we should just go there?
But, looking at the Vortex programme, a much much better idea is to turn up to the gig of Julian Siegel's Quartet on that night at the Vortex