About
Contemporary Music Events and Artist Services (CMEAS): Originally
based in Chicago to allow Midwest bands access to gigs in Britain,
CMEAS (formerly the Chicago Music Explosion, or CME) is a philanthropy
of musicians both in Europe, and the US that has perceived the need
of fellow musicians to circumvent the traditional role of booking
agents and management companies in order to book their own overseas
events. CMEAS works on a philosophy that superb musicians everywhere
find each other's countries exotic and would love to travel. In
2007 alone, CMEAS booked 7international showcase events, comprising
at least 21 acts. We wear the hats of promoters, booking agents,
and publicists. We believe in direct partnership with all the venues,
schools, events and event organisers we are involved with to help
ensure each performance and workshop is a properly promoted well
attended resounding success for everyone involved: audiences, musicians,
students and the venues and schools.
CMEAS
expanded its remit in 2005 to start organising international musical
exchanges too.
CMEAS
is not exclusive to genres and celebrates diversity: From blues
and jazz, alternative, indie and garage rock, folk, celtic, rockabilly,
funk, old school soul, drum and bass, RnB, hip hop, rap, country,
and impossible to classify music, CMEAS will represent them all
- provided, of course, they pass our review process.
Even acts not selected for our events, if successful with our peer
review, will receive assistance in booking UK gigs, networking with
other artists, submitted to Boston based Sonicbids
for inclusion on that site's "In the Spotlight", sometimes
a draw for inclusion in either NEMO Boston Music conference or the
International Songwriting Competition (depending on the event),
and, if a finalist or a high scoring act that has applied three
times already, a free application for another event of their choice.
Top ten acts are immediately invited to reapply for free to any
one of our events.
CMEAS
acts have performed at venues, festivals and workshops in England,
Wales, highlands of Scotland, Costa Rica, Holland and the US. CMEAS
is always looking to increase our international base. There are
currently over 50 venues that CMEAS actively books in the UK alone
with more being added each year.
CMEAS
innovations include the introduction of high school showcase workshops
that have been hailed by students and educators alike as a great
success and are now a focus all our UK tours, professionally recorded
live performances during the tour, and national press recognition
through the UK Press Association (Independent, Guardian and Daily
Mail regularly list our events in the weekend reviews).
Participating
bands have been encouraged to move on and book their own tours in
the UK based on the success of their CMEAS showcases. Pete Special,
the Ghettobillies, Scottish McMillan and the Convulsions have had
tremendous success on their own on the UK circuit. More recently,
the Wabash Cannonballs from Chicago, Gandhi from Costa Rica, Banooba
from New York, Big Baby Ernie from New Jersey, Meg Hutchinson from
Massachusetts, and Breaking Laces from New York, have all secured
repeat tours in the UK through CMEAS booking.
CMEAS,
in conjunction with the artists selected for the tour, sometimes
produces a one time compilation CD of the current line-up (and occasionally
future participants already selected for future events). This CD
sells for more than the artist's and is used to help cover out of
pocket expenses on the road - monies left over are split equally
between CMEAS participants.
In
addition to promoting international showcases in Britain, CMEAS
also takes on bookings of individual acts in the UK and hopes to
expand this into the rest of Europe. We typically have few slots
for these opportunities and only review acts if they have already
applied for one of our events. In rare cases, if the acts are absolutely
superb and can work with us on an international partnership deal
in their country of origin, we may work with them even if they have
not applied for an event. At the moment, all such partnerships are
with acts that have already applied for one or more of our showcase
tours. Typically, in any one year we are already fully committed
with events for the next 12 months. In addition, we also offer high
scoring acts free UK work permit application
filing (the Government's application fee is about $400 and UK based
promoters typically add $200 to that per application but we file
for free).
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CMEAS
Review Process: Our
events are popular. To help accommodate the large number of acts
that apply we have expanded the number of events we organize internationally
and also started a review process that we hope is thorough, fair
and also leads artists to other opportunities beyond the remit of
the event they applied for. To this end, our reviewers, on both
sides of the Atlantic, can at any one time comprise previous CMEAS
participants, our event partners, highly knowledgeable British punters
(audience members), venue bookers/promoters, music advisers (English
Arts Council) and educators, and on occasion at least one opera
singer (who graduated top of her class and sings in 5 languages).
Our
review process relies primarily on a point count of the artist's
online audio files (we do virtually all our initial reviewing online)
to attempt to standardize that which is mostly subjective. If the
music stands up to scrutiny we then look at other aspects of an
artist's submission:
Applicant's music, after an initial screen, is evaluated on three categories; musicality, lyrics (where applicable), and genre (appropriateness to the venues we book). We rate each of these categories on a 1-5 point count at 2 decimal places (e.g. 4.25 / 3.8 / 3.0) where 5 is Mozart, Gershwin, Hendrix, Prince, or Ravi Shankar and 1 is dreadful.
Musicality
is weighted TWO FOLD during calculation of scores and comprises
two components of equal weight: a) virtuosity of the act's music
as a whole and b) overall emotive effectiveness of the music (commonly
referred to by us as the "WOW" factor, as in "wow,
that's awesome!"). Note that the "wow" factor is
not linked to tempo or volume, it's an almost physical reaction
to superb music (for me, goosebumps on the forearms).
Lyrics
are assessed on their ability to give the music a visual dimension
- can they paint a picture for the listener, do they describe accessible
scenarios? They can be simple or complex. A richness of tangible
metaphors, analogy, and often simplicity sway us far more than a
series of words that rhyme because they end in " ion"
or the words have repeated exhortations about the singer's "mind"
and / or "soul". We're not very sympathetic to songs that
describe the same cardboard world of roads, highways, streets, nights,
lights etc with those same cardboard words that umpteen other songs
have used. And if you're going to tell us how we should live our
lives you had better do it profoundly and not attempt to patronize
our reviewers with dime store philosophy.
Genre
is the least important category, but is scored based on our knowledge
of the variety of music most effective at the performance spaces
we book.
The
entire review process itself is three fold:
1. Initial screen: A limited number of reviewers review the music of applicants primarily on ability, originality, and integrity of the music. The latter category may appear vague, but any musician's involvement in their work is self evident in their music. Contrived, lyrically depauperate, imitative work lacking conviction, or work that is mellow but not phenomenal, is usually excluded at this point.
2.
First peer review: Our peer reviewers score applicants on the point
system described above. Musical acts that receive a point count
of 4.00 or higher out of 5 are automatically offered to join our
musician network, and, effectively, become a part of our roster
which includes support finding opportunities abroad even if they
do not make the final tour selection. Acts that score in the top
10% of our peer review overall will be selected for the final selection
and receive our continued love and adoration. If your music does
not contain lyrics (or is in a language none of our reviewers understands
though at least one of them is fluent in Spanish, Italian, and German)
your final score simply does not include that category in the calculation.
3.
Final review: Typically we estimate a short list of between 30 -
80 musical acts for each of our events. This process is the hardest
of all, but involves venue owners and educators* (where the tour
involves workshops) in addition to our group of peer reviewers so
is a way of gearing the event to match the performance spaces (also,
bear in mind that these venues book with us ahead of time not knowing
what acts will be selected so they often express an active interest
in the final selection process). The final selection will start
to take into account other aspects of the act's ability including
(but not limited to) press reviewers of live shows, video footage
where available, activity (if your last gig was a year ago, we would
need to know why), etc. For this reason it is very important for
the artist to have their EPK smack bang up to date: if we check
an artist's EPK tour list past and present and see nothing we will
assume that means the artist is not actively working and that will
negatively prejudice our final review.
ALL
acts in the final selection will receive whatever assistance we
can give locating bookings in the UK. Typically, we will match an
act with specific venues on our roster and encourage them to apply
and to use our organization as a referral. This service is absolutely
free and is offered because we feel really sad at turning away excellent
acts. If acts want us to specifically book them, we are happy to
do that, if we are not already committed with other acts, but at
that point we will charge a 10-20% booking / management fee depending
on the scale of our involvement. We will also offer finalists the
opportunity to know who each other are - those folks who wish to
be included will be introduced to each other after the final selection
process.
As
a final thank you, we may enter your act into a draw for either
the NEMO Boston Music Conference or the International Songwriting
Competition depending on the event.
AND top ten finalists will be offered a free application for any one of our future events (this means we also pay the Sonicbids' commission too - i.e. we will pay for you to apply). For finalists not in the top ten but who have already applied for three of our events we will offer to do the same (though we do suggest there's no point unless they've improved their EPK since their last application).
*School
workshops can happen through schools selecting artists directly
from our roster on our myspace
page.
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to top |
| CMEAS
Frequently Asked Questions: |
|
| Question: |
Answer: |
| 1.
I saw your event advertised on Sonicbids, do I have to apply
through them? |
We
have an exclusive online booking agreement with Sonicbids for
most of our events. We usually point out to artists that find
out about our events through Sonicbids that they would not have
found out about us if it were not for Sonicbids. We can accept
mailed in applications though we are contractually obliged to
charge more ($5 in our case) than the online application and
this doesn't include postage |
| 2.
Here is our EPK - could you please review for your tour in the
UK? |
If
you think about it, this is pretty cheeky and lacks imagination
- first off, the artist probably found out about us through
our posting on Sonicbids and, secondly, is not considering that
we're going to review those artists who pay our application
fee before those that don't (and besides, we don't review unsolicited
submissions over the internet as it is contrary to our agreement
with Sonicbids). |
| 3.
We don't want to submit online, can we mail in a press kit? |
We
discourage mailed in hardcopy for several reasons:
1.
Our reviewers are located both in the US and the UK so dealing
with hardcopy material is inconvenient for us as we have the
added step of digitizing what the artist has submitted and
sending that to overseas reviewers.
2. Mailed in applications will be the last reviewed because
of this inconvenience (and because we want you to apply online
to make all our lives easier). This won't affect our overall
judgement of an act.
3. We charge $5 more for mailed in applications. This is not
because we're fascist tight wads (we won't divulge our politics,
but they're quite kindly we think) but is a contractual agreement
we have with Sonicbids for any event that we partner with
them. |
| 4.
Are international flights covered? |
Not
usually. We did this for our Oct. 2005 Tour and our organisation
lost a lot of money as a consequence (the artists did not, we
hasten to add!) For events where we are only offering 1-2 artist
slots we will usually, until further notice, offer one international
flight. For our tours where the event is open to 3-4 acts we
will not be able to do this at this time. For our Costa Rican
Tour 2007 we offered 1 international airfare and full coverage
of all other tour costs apart from lunch and beer at lunch.
If the Musicuba festival takes off we will look to do the same
in 2008 for that. |
| 5.
Are work permits provided? |
Yes.
Where applicable (not needed in Holland if artist there for
less than 3 months, or at all in Costa Rica). |
| 6.
Do the gigs pay? |
Yes.
Compensation for every gig (except events in Cuba - any money
made there must be donated to a NGO). Most gigs have guarantees,
the international booking venues tend to work purely on tickets,
the workshops all have guarantees. Remuneration depends on the
total number of musicians and the individual venue but typically
works out at about $20-$80 per individual per event (this doesn't
include any revenue the artist makes from merchandise). |
| 7.
How many acts on the tour? |
1-4.
Total of 12 musicians typically, usually comprising one or two
bands plus on soloists and / or duo. |
| 8.
Is there an age limit? |
No.
If the musician is under the age of 18, a signed letter of permission
from parent or legal guardian is required. |
| 9.
I'm a musician resident <in some country other than the US>,
can I still apply? |
Absolutely!
We were originally based in Chicago (now registered in Chicago
and Lancaster, UK) but have gone on to expand our remit internationally.
If you are resident in the country one of our events occurs
you will still be able to apply. |
| 10.
I don't see any hip hop <other genre not in past participants
list> represented in past participants, do you accept applications
from that genre? |
Absolutely!
We are not genre specific, though we usually exclude non-secular
(i.e. religious) as our audience are rarely interested in it
- our only requirement really is that the music is very good.
Previous participants were selected from Chicago and the Midwest
based on their ability and desire to travel to the UK - we simply
did not have RnB or hip hop artists apply (that, I am happy
to say, has changed!). |
| 11.
What gear should I bring? |
If
you are selected for an event we can discuss this in more detail,
but CMEAS does provide a backline of PA, mics, stands, two guitar
amps, one bass amp, full kit (though we ask drummers to bring
their own cymbals and pedal- oh, and sticks!) Keyboards may
be more problematic, though we should be able to provide a Korg
CX3 (Hammond synth). We don't typically provide guitars but
we can provide back-ups if needed (ask Sean of Mudfunk!). |
| 12.
I'm a guitarist with a foot pedal rack, can I operate this on
UK voltage? |
We'll
provide adaptors / convertors on an as need basis. For simple
pedals a UK 9V adaptor is sufficient (though, of course, we
do have the same 9V batteries as the States). |
| 13.
Can I contact venues on your venue list regardless of not being
selected / or applying for your event/s? |
We'd
rather you didn't unless we have agreed to represent and / or
recommend you (see review process above).
However, if you do so without our blessing, we request that
you do not mention us as a referral. |
| 14.
Why do you book so far in advance? |
Apart
from London, most British venues book at a minimum of 5 months
in advance and often a year. If there is one thing that cobbles
previous CMEAS participants from organizing their own UK tour
effectively, it is a basic lack of this understanding. For example,
the Oct 2005 tour booking started in Sept. 2004. What many acts
fail to appreciate is that it is the good 'ole British pubs
that book the furthest in advance (as an example we attempted
to book a Dec. 21st 2005 date in a Norwich pub in Jan. 2005
and it was already gone - this is a rather extreme example,
but you get the idea). |
| 15.
Is there any way to be represented by CMEAS other than through
Sonicbids and / or this specific event? |
Yes,
several. Because we encourage musical exchanges, we will work
with quality acts outside the remit of a particular event (we
did this in March 2005 for a Texas musician and in the first
week of October for a NYC band - both in the UK) if they have
something to offer us in return (good 'ole barter system). If
you have a steady gig base, we can help match you with an act
or acts that also have a good gig base and also want to play
in other locations. They may, for example, be in another country
or another part of your country. What we don't do is work with
acts that want us to do everything for them and nothing in return
("we're really good, book us in England!") - we believe
that attitude to be contrary to our philosophy of mutual musical
collaboration, and is certainly shortsighted and rather conceited. |
| 16.
There is mention of a compilation CD to be sold on the tour.
Could you tell me more about this and also, can we sell our
CDs? |
Both
to promote the event and also to help offset out of pocket expenses
on the road (lunch, site seeing excursions such as tickets to
Castles etc), we sometimes produce a one time only compilation
CD comprising two tracks from each act selected and sometimes
cuts from acts that are already selected for future events.
We take 25% of the net sales for out of pocket expenses and
split the rest between the artists. Any monies left over are
split evenly between the artists. This compilation sells at
₤15 in the UK whereas we recommend artists sell their
own albums for ₤10 and EPs for ₤5 of which they
keep all revenue. Past experience shows that the compilation
CD does not compete with artist's CD sales provided they place
at least one track on that compilation not available on their
own CDs. In fact, it adds to overall income for them. |
| 17.
How many CDs will I sell? |
This
varies depending on the affluence of the places we play. Typically
about 1-5 per show in the north of England and 4-10 in the south.
|
| 18.
T-shirt sales? |
We
used to say not to bother but the last three tours in 2006 totally
proved us wrong with strong sales from Big
Baby Ernie, Wabash
Cannonballs, and Gandhi. |
| 19.
Stickers? |
Yep!
We still have Big Baby Ernie stickers on the overhead beams
on the main walkway at Lancaster University and Ghettobilly
stickers on the condom machine in the Bell at Bath toilets.
|
| 20.
How long are the sets? |
In
pubs, for 3 acts typically 45 minutes. Half an hour if 4 acts.
Late night closing venues 45 minutes regardless. Bear in mind
that British pubs mostly close at 11pm with live music starting
at 9pm (8.30pm - 10.30pm on a Sunday). This arcane law changed
on Nov. 24th 2005 to allow 24 hour licenses and has had no dramatic
impact on the status quo (as yet). |
| 21.
Visas: What if the artist is not an EU or US citizen? |
It
is the artist's responsibility to determine if they have the
correct visa for their visit to the UK, or any other locations
we're hosting an event. The artist should bear in mind that
they may need a visa that specifically allows them to work in
conjunction with the work permit. Commonwealth (e.g. Canada,
Australia etc), EU and US citizens do not need special visas
to enter the EU. |
| 22.
If we are selected can we arrive before/leave after the tour
starts/commences |
Yes.
We only ask that you ensure you are present for the duration
of the tour. Typically, you will not have a problem with UK
Immigration if you arrive a few days before, or leave a few
days after, the tour. However, CMEAS will not guarantee to pick
you up for the start of the tour at any other location than
the nearest international airport to the first venue nor to
cover your costs to that airport (or the first venue on the
tour). |
| 23.
We have applied for a number of your events and we still have
not gotten selected. Is there any chance that we will? |
Since
we have started partnering with Sonicbids we have had a number
of superb acts apply for our events. Some of these acts (Fluttr
Effect, Meg Hutchinson, Bob Cheevers, Cafebar 401) were not
selected the first time around but were either selected for
a subsequent event (Fluttr Effect, Meg Hutchinson) or were
booked by us in the UK either as a complete tour (Wabash Cannonballs),
part of a tour hey already had going (Bob Cheevers), or as
an exchange for a tour they helped organise in their own country
(Cafebar 401, Ghandi).
We
have quite a few others we want to similarly help out (the
charming thing here is that some of the acts don't even know
this yet!)
It
is only fair to point out that if you get positive encouragement
from us that is good whereas if you do not that is not so
good and you may want to change/improve your EPK before applying
again. Although we like receiving application money we do
stress that if you don't get a high mark from our peer review
you may be wasting your money applying again unless you have
a profoundly improved EPK (focusing on the audio to start
with). |
| 24.
We have applied three times for your events and have scored
highly in your peer review. Is it true that the next time we
apply CMEAS will pay for our application including Sonicbids'
commission? |
Yes.
If you are deemed that wonderful by our peer review, we want
you to play on our events, or book you on a tour on your own,
or work out a partnership. We will personally reimburse your
application fee for any next event you apply for if you have
already applied for three and passed our peer review. |
| 25.
What does "pass your peer review" mean? |
If
you are in our top 10% of peer reviewed acts that means you
are, effectively, a finalist for the event you applied for.
Typically that is about 30 to 50 acts depending on the event.
|
| 26.
We received an email telling us that we were in the top ten
finalists and that CMEAS would pay for us to apply for another
event. Is this true? |
Yes.
All top 10 finalists are notified by email and offered this.
We don't want to crowd out other acts from having a chance but
on the other hand we wish to maintain extremely high standards
at the venues we book (even though, at this stage, most of them
are music pubs in England, college bars, and medium sized clubs
in the UK or mainland Europe). |
| 27.
I have just paid $25 to apply to one of your events. Can I expect
the usual form letter rejection? |
No
one has actually asked us this, so this is a bit of a pitch
really, but it explains our philosophy so we put it in there!
We figure, as musicians ourselves who have also applied for
a bunch of stuff through Sonicbids (shortlisted for most,
accepted on one, form letters all the way except NXNE) that
it is only reasonable to have your submission of money taken
seriously. In effect, we view an application fee for an event
as an application fee to be part of CMEAS.
Granted,
we have a lot of superb acts that we've shortlisted in the
past and there's no way we can accommodate all of them in
one touring year. However, those that are persistent do end
up getting real material help from us (see FAQ number 22 above)
and we are always itching to figure a way to get the other
acts that we enjoy more involved. Even if that means simply
networking them with like minded acts.
Our
philosophy is to move on from self centered worship of one's
own music, a conceited focus on nothing but one's own creative
puddle, but to swim in a far vaster realm of music with folks
whose music will slake your thirst as yours does theirs. |
| 28.
Can an act selected for a CMEAS event be considered for other
events if they apply for them? |
This
hasn't happened yet (though we've booked several acts on tours
that didn't make our final selection but scored highly on
our peer review) but in theory, yes.
However,
we do not expect acts that have been selected for a tour in
the UK, for example, to apply for another UK event. In practice
that act will already have garnered a tour base by being selected
the first time around. That said, Big Baby Ernie who were
selected to take part in our Oct. UK Tour also applied for
our 2007 Costa Rican tour and did end up in the top ten (Banooba
from NYC were selected for this event in the end).
Also,
we like to encourage new talent. However, as we start to increase
the number of international events that we organize it is
reasonable to expect previously successful applicants to want
to take part in those events too (to date we've had one query
about this).
At
CMEAS we are always concerned about conflict of interest.
Should a previously accepted act apply for another of our
events they will, of course, pass our screening process BUT
from that point on they will not receive one review or recommendation
from any reviewer involved in their previous applications
or by any individual who witnessed their performances while
on tour for the previous event (i.e. they will be reviewed
by a whole set of new reviewers who are not positively prejudiced
in the act's favour).
Personally,
we'd rather NOT see previous participants reapply for our
other events so that new talent is given a chance. |
| 29.
Will we need work permits to play in the UK and if so what do
we need to do in order to obtain them? |
Ahh,
work permits: This is always a sheer joy (welcome to England’s
lowest form of wit - sarcasm). Unless you are an EU citizen
you will need work permits to take part on our UK tours. The
Work Permit (UK) folks have a mandate to process 90% of their
permit applications within 3 weeks which is blindingly better
than the comparative process in the USA. It's cheaper too
(about $300 per band). However, if anything is not right about
the application this will hold up the process. We submit,
and pay for, the applications for you but also point out in
our contract that if you do not provide us with the following
information by the time we request it CMEAS is not liable
for you not obtaining permits.
Sorry
to be a hardnose - everything else about our tours are great
fun! However, to start with if accepted you will need to provide
us with:
1. Passport information for each band member (country of issue,
full name as it appears on the passport, date of birth, passport
number, passport expiration date).
2.
Stage name aliases. If you use stage names please reference
them to your real names for us.
3. List of last 2 years of shows. The Work Permit (UK) folks
need to know that you are actively performing. Printing out
lists of past shows from your Sonicbids’ EPK is sufficient
(or MySpace, or your website etc).
4. Hardcopy proof that each band member is a working musician.
This is the hardest one to explain and the hardest to provide.
What the permit people are looking for are images on performance
related material that have band member’s names on
them (and, yes, these can be stage names provided you provide
as with aliases). This can be CD artwork, posters designed
by a venue (not by the band, technically, but if you have
‘em throw them in anyway), and scans of press. What
won’t work are posters with just the name of the band,
photos of the band members on stage (unless they have name
captions for each band member and are sourced from press),
typed in copies of press. The more of this stuff you can provide
us the better. If you have ANY doubt about what is being asked
for here please let us know.
5.
Contract. We will provide this – in fact we will probably
email you a signed contract for you to countersign and bring
with you through immigration along with your work permits.
We have to submit a signed contract to Work Permit UK too.
Typically, bands take forever getting these mailed back to
us so to expedite this we may ask you to scan your signed
contract we emailed you.
6.
Postal address to send work permits to. If we end up nail-bitingly
close to the deadline we can also fax the work permits to
Manchester Immigration (this is, alas, the norm not the exception).
7.
Visas! If you are not a Commonwealth citizen (i.e. not Canadian,
US Citizen, Australian or Kiwi) you will almost certainly
require a visa to visit our green and pleasant island. This
is something best checked out before finding out you are accepted
on our tours.
For
the record, to date (Oct. 2006) we've never had an application
refused BUT we've had some scary moments we'd like to not
re-live. One artist did miss two days of a tour because of
number 7. above and that cost her dearly in plane fares. |
| 30.
I have just paid $20 to apply for one of your events. Where
does the money go? |
Sonicibids
takes a 30% commission. The remainder of the fees collected
go towards the event itself, CMEAS operating costs, investment
and servicing company debt from tours that lost money. A tour
typically costs about $8000 to run (multiply food, accommodation
and a per diem by ten musicians and add that to work permit
costs, fuel costs and you quickly see that this is not a profitable
business to be in)!
Our
operating costs of which vehicle repair, maintenance and insurance
and licensing are the biggest (at time of writing, Nov. 2007,
these came out to $10,500) are not limited to specific events.
Sometimes the tour makes a loss though CMEAS always guarantees
artists at least a $20 per diem per musician as well as one
full meal and accommodation no matter what and these debts
are also paid off incrementally.
Each
year, however, we also try to improve the services we offer
by purchasing equimpment (PA, drum sets etc) as needed. Any
tour profits go into this investment.
In
exceptional circumstances we may also need to take a percentage
of gig guarantees to ensure tour costs are covered but in
these cases the artists concerned will be informed of this
and it will in no way affect the contract agreed between themselves
and CME Artist Services.
|
| If
you don't see your question here, email us and we'll answer
it for you and, if relevant, include it on this list: faq@cmeas.com
|
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| Back
to top |
|
|
CMEAS Mission Statement:
1. Promote diversity of live music globally
2. Share the particular skills and experience of playing abroad with several generations of listeners at a wide variety of venues and events
3. Help increase the live music involvement and awareness of the younger generation through school workshops
4. Foster an exchange of bands and promote collaborations between international artists
Events:
1. Concerts in venues ranging from pubs, clubs, college bars, festivals, community centers, Village Halls, High Schools, and Arts Council supported venues
2. Community workshops to include the sharing of individual musical techniques and playing styles with students of all ages. Involve the students in performances with international musicians. Additional instruction in sound engineering and recording, and international touring as required.
Goals:
1. Expand our remit yearly to include events in other countries, not just Britain, including the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Latin America.
2. To help create an international musician supported network of musical collaboration.
3. To support grassroots initiatives in the development of musical events and educations.
4. To allow wonderful music to flourish globally and without compromise.
5.
To promote sustainable living in this threatened world (we run our
bus on vegetable oil - other bands can too).
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