Queen, Diana Ross and Elton John are among the artists slated to perform at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee concert.

Duran Duran, Craig David, Eurovision singer Sam Ryder, Ella Eyre, Elbow, Alicia Keys, Hans Zimmer, Mabel, Jax Jones, Celeste, Andrea Bocelli, Sigala and Nile Rodgers will also appear in front of Buckingham Palace in London.

The Platinum Party at the Palace will be watched by 22,000 people live and will be broadcast on BBC One on 4 June.

Queen guitarist Brian May will return, 20 years after he famously performed on the palace roof for the Golden Jubilee.

The legendary pop group and their frontman Lambert will open the concert to mark the monarch’s 70 years on the throne.

Ross said she was “absolutely delighted to receive an invitation to perform on such a momentous and historic occasion”

The show will be closed by veteran soul singer Ross, who said she was “absolutely delighted to receive an invitation to perform on such a momentous and historic occasion”.

Sir Elton John will take part too, although his performance will be pre-recorded because he is currently on a European tour.

The two-and-a-half-hour Platinum concert will feature three stages and 3D projections across the face of the palace.

A ballot for 5,000 tickets opened in March; some tickets will also be handed out to selected charities.

Other events will include a carnival pageant on the streets of London, featuring performances by Ed Sheeran and Sir Cliff Richard.

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Sunday’s Fire Fight Australia charity concert has raised almost AU$10 million (US$6.7m) for bushfire relief, with promoters TEG Dainty and TEG Live expecting more donations to come.

The mammoth nine-and-a-half-hour benefit concert took place at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium on 16 February, with an audience of 75,000 watching performances from Queen and Adam Lambert, Alice Cooper, Michael Bublé, 5 Seconds of Summer and Peking Duk, among others.

The concert was broadcast live across Australia, thanks to a partnership between TEG and television networks Foxtel and Seven Network. Highlights of the show will be broadcast worldwide in the coming days with a call to action to donate.

The AU$9.5 m ($6.4m) raised so far will go to rural and regional fire services, Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery, RSPCA Bushfire Appeal and the BizRebuild programme.

“What a day and what a night it has been,” comments TEG CEO Geoff Jones. “Our huge thanks are owed to the 23 artists and bands and to the many companies and people who donated their time and services to make Fire Fight Australia happen.

“It has been an enormous effort from the music industry to pull this concert together in five weeks and we are just so proud of what has been achieved through our collective effort.”

“It has been an enormous effort from the music industry to pull this concert together in five weeks”

“We are overjoyed at the response from all of the fans here tonight at ANZ Stadium in Sydney and around the world,” adds TEG Dainty CEO Paul Dainty. “From the first conversation with Queen’s manager, Jim Beach, the band’s immediate response to support this amazing event was what set everything in motion.

“We want to give a special shout out to Celeste Barber for hosting this historic event, she has been one of the greatest supporters and we thank her.

“People can continue to donate and purchase the official Fire Fight Australia T-Shirt online with 100% of proceeds going to the fundraising efforts.”

A full breakdown of the final amounts raised will be made available in due course. TEG intends to keep donations open until mid May, when international broadcasts end. Accounting firm Deloitte will provide a post-event report detailing revenues, expenses and confirmation of the final donations to the various charities.

Jones, Dainty and TEG Live CEO Tim McGregor wrote in IQ ahead of Fire Fight Australia this weekend, describing how the star-studded event came to be. Read TEG’s journey to Fire Fight Australia here.

https://www.iqmagazine.com/2020/02/fire-fight-australia-the-journey-so-far/#.XkpuaRP7T5Y

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All general admission tickets for TEG Dainty and TEG Live’s upcoming bushfire benefit concert have sold out, as the promoters record an “overwhelming demand” for the Queen- and Alice Cooper-fronted event.

According to a statement from organisers, over 65,000 tickets had been sold for Fire Fight Australia, a nine-hour concert raising funds to provide relief from the Australian wildfires, within five hours of release.

The promoters state they are now working together with Sydney’s 83,500-capacity ANZ Stadium, where the event is taking place from 1 p.m. on Sunday 16 February, to push sales over the 70,000 mark.

All profits from concert ticket will be donated to rural and regional fire services, the Australian Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery programme and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) Bushfire Appeal.

Queen and Adam Lambert, Alice Cooper, Olivia Newton-John, Peking Duk, John Farnham and Hilltop Hoods are among acts performing at the event

Queen and Adam Lambert, who are performing a sold-out show at the stadium the previous night, will appear alongside Alice Cooper, Olivia Newton-John, Peking Duk, John Farnham and Hilltop Hoods at the event, which is hosted by Australian comedian Celeste Barber, the initiator of a AU$50 million (US$34.5m) Facebook fundraising drive for bushfire relief.

Fire Fight Australia is one of a number of benefit concerts taking place in Australia in aid of bushfire relief. Details of Sound Relief 2020, a concert organised by leading Australian promoters Chugg Entertainment, Frontier Touring, Live Nation Australia, Secret Sounds and IMC Music HQ, will be released soon.

Live Nation’s Australian businesses – Live Nation Australia and New Zealand, Secret Sounds, Ticketmaster Australia and Moshtix – today (13 January) pledged $500,000 to bushfire relief.

A limited number of tickets for the TEG event are still available via the Ticketek website. Tickets are priced at AU$70 ($48), $85 ($59) and $100 ($69). Fans can make an additional donation to bushfire relief here.

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Heroes – the Exhibition, a photographic exploration of the sixty-year history of the SSE Arena, Wembley, is opening to the public on Thursday 28 November at Getty Images Gallery, Wembley Park.

The exhibition will feature over 100 photographs of artists at the London music venue, which celebrated its busiest year yet in 2018.

From 1960s snaps of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to more recent images of Kendrick Lamar, Queens of the Stone Age and the Prodigy, the exhibition will cover the arena’s rich musical history. Other artists to feature in the collection include David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Whitney Houston, Queen, Prince, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Rihanna.

Words by the arena’s vice president and general manager John Drury accompany the photos, which are taken by renowned music photographer Michael Putland and former and current Getty photographers Dave Hogan and Brian Risac, among others.

“Over the past 60 years The SSE Arena, Wembley has earned its place as one of the most iconic live music venues in the world,” comments Drury. “There is a chemistry that keeps bringing artists and fans back, that feeling of connection, passion, and shared experience.

“Heroes brilliantly captures the magic on stage and in the audience that could happen nowhere else”

“Playing Wembley for the first time is a special milestone in any artist’s career and each show builds on its legendary status. That is what Heroes brilliantly captures, the magic on stage and in the audience that could happen nowhere else.”

Built in 1934, the arena in Wembley – originally known as the Empire Pool – has been a live music venue for over six decades. Following a £26 million refurbishment, the arena reopened in 2006, taking the name of the SSE Arena, Wembley in 2014.

“Wembley Park has always been about people coming together to share experiences, and The SSE Arena, Wembley is central to this,” says Josh McNorton, cultural director of Wembley Park.

“Over the past 60 years, it has played an enormous part in the cultural history of the area and in global music history, and Heroes is a great way to celebrate this through the performances of some of the world’s most famous performers.”

The exhibition is open every day from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Getty Images Gallery, Wembley Park. Admission is free for the first three days. All photographs are available for purchase, priced from £70 to £648.

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Just how do you organise a surprise feature for the shrewdest, most organised man in the music business?

It began when Pino Sagliocco took part in the Think Tank at ILMC 30 and a number of “accidental” meetings and conversations since: lunch, drinks and enough scribbled notes to fill a book. But as we go to press, Pino is still blissfully unaware of our birthday/work anniversary surprise, so thank you to each and every one of you who managed to keep this secret.

It’s somewhat ironic that Spain’s most popular promoter is an Italian. Born in the village of Carinaro on the outskirts of Naples, in 1959, Pino contends that he never really fitted in.

“I was an alien in my own village,” is how he describes his childhood. “I was pretty good at school but I had no passion for it and I became used to just sitting in class and reading by myself. I was tall and looked a lot older than I was and I simply didn’t belong in my village any more,” is his explanation of why he left home at just 12 years old.

Setting off on his adventures, Pino simply walked to the village railway station with no clothes other than the jeans and t-shirt he was wearing and boarded the first train. When the train stopped, he found a hotel next to the station, asked for a job and began his working life carrying luggage for guests. Next, he found himself selling fruit in the local market, building the foundations of what would become a highly successful entrepreneurial career.

Making Friends with Folk
“At the age of about 15 or 16 I joined a hippy community and entered an alternative cultural world,” he says. It was in this environment that he started to become involved in music, organising concerts and events for the likes of The Chieftains and other folk acts.

“Franco had recently died and the city of Barcelona was just full of energy, so it was an exciting time and place to be”

Then, as is the case in so many epic tales, along came a girl. “She was from Barcelona, so at the age of 18, I moved to Spain,” he recalls. “Franco had recently died and the city of Barcelona was just full of energy, so it was an exciting time and place to be.”

Now, with a growing appetite for promoting, Pino set about building his business, starting out with a show by Celtic harp legend Alan Stivell using a local Barcelona church as a venue. “I wanted to do things that nobody had done before, so everything had to be a bit different to make the experience special – I remember doing shows with Greek singer Georges Moustaki, who was the boyfriend of Edith Piaf.”

Interested in anything avant garde, Pino found himself falling in love with Studio 54 in Barcelona and, exercising his legendary powers of persuasion, cajoled the club’s owners into allowing him to put on similarly branded events in Ibiza and Madrid.

“At the time, all the bands that were coming to Spain were big and established acts – Guy Mercader had the likes of The Stones etc, sewn up. But I got bands like ABC, Spandau Ballet, Talk Talk, Imagination, Simple Minds and Sade to start coming to Spain when they were still relatively unknown,” says Pino.

Having established Ibiza as his second home, one evening Pino bumped into Queen drummer Roger Taylor in one of the island’s nightclubs. “It was 1985 and Roger was kind enough to introduce me to the band’s manager, Jim Beach, and on the back of that, I got to work on the Magic Tour.”

Pino’s association with Queen and iconic frontman Freddie Mercury started there. The Queen tour broke the mould in Spain, as it visited the country in August, a month when everything traditionally closes down for holidays. Anxious that the three dates in Barcelona, Madrid and Marbella would flop, Pino convinced Mercury to do a press interview ahead of the first show – something that the singer rarely did – and the result was three massively successful nights.

“I wanted to do things that nobody had done before, so everything had to be a bit different to make the experience special”

“Around the same time, I was getting an idea to do something big for television in Ibiza and one night I was hanging out with a Spanish band at my house when an interview with Queen was shown on TV that I had never seen before. During the programme, Freddie was asked if there were any Spanish artists he would like to work with and he mentioned the opera star, Monserrat Caballé.”

Following much collaboration with Jim Beach, Pino managed to arrange a meeting between the two singers on 24 March 1987 at a hotel in Barcelona, where Mercury brought along a demo of a song he had co-written in the hope Cabellé would agree to record a duet with him.

“On 29 May they opened my Ibiza 92 show with the premiere of the song ‘Barcelona’ – it was magical,” says Pino, adding that acts also on the bill for that TV extravaganza from the White Isle included Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Chris Rea, Poison, Nona Hendryx, Marillion and Spanish acts Hombres G and E Último de la Fila.

“The TV show was seen in 31 countries worldwide and the collaboration between Monserrat Caballé and Freddie Mercury was a huge hit. They performed together for the last time in 1988 when they sang the song to celebrate the arrival of the Olympic Flag in Barcelona from Seoul.

“I had been asked to organise something for the occasion, so they performed to 100,000 people in front of the Fountains of Montjuïc and shared a stage with Spandau Ballet, Eddie Grant, Jerry Lee Lewis and Suzanne Vega, as well as Rudolf Nureyev and flamenco dancers, with Freddie and Monserrat closing the show. It was amazing – I won a gold medal for the show, which I like to joke was the first gold given for the Barcelona Olympics.”

Continue reading this feature in the digital edition of IQ 82, or subscribe to the magazine here

Sunday night’s 91st Academy Awards were a celebration of both live music and cinema, as Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and music touring road film Green Book were among the evening’s most successful films.

Bohemian Rhapsody, the filmic celebration of Queen, the band’s music and lead singer Freddie Mercury, took home the most awards of the night. Rami Malek’s portrayal of Mercury earned him the Oscar for best actor, following his Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Bafta wins.

The film, directed by Brian Singer and Dexter Fletcher, also won the awards for film editing, sound editing and sound mixing.

Another big music-focused winner came in the form of Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, a film inspired by the true story of African-American pianist, Dr Don Shirley, and his 1962 tour across the deep south of the United States with driver and de facto road manager, Anthony Vallelonga.

Green Book won the coveted Oscar for best picture, as well as the original screenplay award. Mahershala Ali took home the prize for best supporting actor for his role as pianist Shirley.

Congratulations to the #GreenBookMovie team on 3 Academy Award wins! #Oscars pic.twitter.com/OCN7yv97qN

— Green Book (@greenbookmovie) February 25, 2019

Live performances on the night came from Queen, as well as from artists featuring in the best original song category.

Fronted by Adam Lambert in the place of the late Mercury, Queen opened the ceremony with live renditions of ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are the Champions’. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper performed A Star is Born hit ‘Shallow’, winner of best original song.

Other performances came from Bette Midler, who sang ‘The Place Where Lost Things Go’ from Mary Poppins Returns. Jennifer Hudson performed ‘I’ll Fight’ from RBG, the documentary film about the career of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Grammy award-winning Kacey Musgraves introduced David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s live rendition of ‘When a Cowboy Trades his Spurs for Wings’ from Coen brothers western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Elsewhere, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma won three awards, for best director, cinematography and best foreign language film. It is the fifth time in six years that a Mexican director has won the award.

Black Panther also proved successful, clinching the awards for original score, production design and costume design. The film’s score consists of original songs produced by Kendrick Lamar and compositions by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson.

See a full list of winners below:

Best Picture
Green Book

Director
Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Actor
Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Actress
Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Supporting Actor
Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Supporting Actress
Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Original Screenplay
Green Book

Adapted Screenplay
BlackKklansman

Foreign Language Film
Roma

Animated Feature
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Sound Editing
Bohemian Rhapsody

Visual Effects
First Man

Film Editing
Bohemian Rhapsody

Animated Short
Bao

Live Action Short
Skin

Documentary Short
Period. End of Sentence.

Original Score
Black Panther

Original Song
‘Shallow’ from A Star Is Born

Production Design
Black Panther

Cinematography
Roma

Costume Design
Black Panther

Makeup and Hairstyling
Vice

Documentary Feature
Free Solo

Sound Mixing
Bohemian Rhapsody

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AirX has announced that Queen + Adam Lambert are the first music artists to join the company’s growing Ambassador Programme. Coinciding with the Ambassador Programme, AirX will be flying the artists on their European tour to 16 shows in 14 cities across Europe.

Bernhard Wallner, group chief commercial officer, was at Farnborough Airport to welcome the band members onto their personalised Challenger 850 to commence their sold-out European tour.

AirX has significant experience and expertise in the organisation and management of music tours, and the company says it is “very proud to have Queen and Adam Lambert as their first music ambassadors”.

The Ambassador Programme now comprises Queen + Adam Lambert, the professional boxer Anthony Joshua OBE and footballer Aaron Ramsey.

Want to promote your business or product with a sponsored news story/banner package? Contact Archie Carmichael on +44 203 743 3288 or [email protected] for more information.

Positivus, the Baltics’ largest music festival, today finalised its 2016 line-up.

New additions include Joss Stone, Branko, Chloe Martini, Hana, The Very Best, Italian group JoyCut and Mike Skinner and Murkage‘s club night, Tonga, who will join Ellie Goulding, Iggy Pop, M83, Years & Years, Hot Chip, John Newman, Air, Grimes, Wolf Alice and more at the three day-event in the Latvian coastal town of Salacgriva.

Over 30,000 tickets have been sold for the festival, promoted by Ģirts Majors’ Positivus Music, which takes place from 15 to 17 July.

Primal Scream have cancelled their slots at eight festivals, including Azkena Rock Festival, Musiqes en Stock, the Beat-Herder, Rock in Roma and the Secret Garden Party, after frontman Bobby Gillespie fell off the stage at Caribana Festival in Vaud, Switzerland, last week.

The band revealed on Twitter that Gillespie has been ordered to rest for a “minimum of eight weeks”.

Primal Scream / Bobby Gillespie news: pic.twitter.com/d0pw5skRqo

— Primal Scream (@ScreamOfficial) June 9, 2016

(Bobby Gillespie photo by Rodrigo Díaz.)

Headliner Elton John and main support act Madness are the first acts to be announced for the BBC’s Radio 2 in Hyde Park 2016.

Here’s hoping the event’s security are less heavy handed than the “pricks” on duty at Leicestershire County Cricket Ground earlier this week…

Leona Lewis, Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams, The Shires, The Corrs and Giorgio Moroder played last year’s event.

A host of new names have been announced for Butlin’s’ Great British Folk Festival this December.

Joining headliners Donovan, Levellers and Kate Rusby in Skegness will be Bob Geldof, Oysterband, Lindisfarne, a Ronnie Lane-less Slim Chance, Gryphon and more. Tickets start at £79 and include three nights’ accommodation at the Butlin’s Skegness resort.

IQ revealed in February that Butlin’s will welcome close to half a million visitors to 58 festivals at its three holiday parks throughout 2016. (Bob Geldof photo Matthias Muehlbradt.)

Liverpool International Music Festival (LIMF) has announced the launch of a ‘pop-up’ radio station, LIMF Radio, for its 2016 event.

The station, broadcasting on 87.7 FM and online at www.limfradio.co.uk, will “reflect the past and present Liverpool music scene, as well as featuring artists and bands who will be taking part in July’s highly anticipated event”. It will also provide training for 35 local young Liverpudlians who want to work in radio.

Artists playing the free festival, backed by the city of Liverpool, include Sigma, The Wombats, Wretch 32, The Lightning Seeds, Buzzcocks and Lianne La Havas.

Queen and singer Adam Lambert dedicated their headline slot at the Isle of Wight Festival last weekend to the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

Lambert, who has sung with the band since 2011, said: “This song [‘Who Wants to Live Forever’] is dedicated to those who lost their lives in Orlando, Florida, and anyone who has been a victim of senseless violence or hatred.” (Queen/Adam Lambert photo by DianaKat on SmugMug.)

The festival also paid tribute to the late David Bowie, selling Aladdin Sane masks to raise money for charity Stand Up to Cancer and putting on a tribute featuring Andrea Corr and Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, who sung a medley including ‘Starman’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Rebel Rebel’ and ‘All the Young Dudes’.

Promoter John Giddings, who was Bowie’s agent for over 30 years, described him as a “true friend to the festival”.