Roundhouse Rising 2018: Round-Up

Roundhouse Rising returns the Roundhouse studios for 2018, presenting a week of carefully curated nights to showcase the Roundhouse’s best emerging artists, as well as collaborators as high calibre as BBC Introducing to bring the emerging artist community together.

The Festival kicked off with Awate – Roundhouse Resident artist. Awate brings a musical spin on to rap music, with melodies and tones underlying each production he brings to stage. He also admirably claimed the attention of entire room carrying just himself on stage, proving himself to be a first class performer.

Acclaimed jazz collective Jazz Re:freshed brought their revolutionary jazz (what it says on the tine) to the festival too, featuring a number of hip hop collaborators to create a truly innovative form of live performance.

BBC Introducing also brought their highly acclaimed live nights to Roundhouse Rising, where Roundhouse Radio (now Transmission Radio) producer Harrison Stock presented, the event showing a true collaborative spirt. The night had a headline from rapidly rising Grime star Yizzy. As well as support from Dapz on the Map, Alacai Harley, Mvngo x Lashes.

The festival also includes learning opportunities for emerging music industry enthusiasts. This year the opportunity was bigger than ever with a day full of panel events hosted at the YouTube Space, which saw guest speakers from Jack Garratt’s marketing guru to Rudimental’s producer. A performance from Roundhouse’s Audio Collective project also featured. Creative organisation Wired4Music also hosted their event ‘Sound Connections’ aka Rising Futures of a similar nature, but also incorporating mental well-being awareness and with an open mic at the end of the night.

The most notable event of the festival was Little Simz’s closing all day festival: “Welcome to Wonderland: The Experience.” This saw the festival’s first use of the main space – a pivotal moment in any emerging artists’ career to perform there. The entire building was taken over with Little Simz’s curation as well as the Transmission Roundhouse Radio’s launch. And with Little Simz as en ex Roundhouse emerging artist herself, this was a special day for all and the perfect way to solidify what the festival is about.

The Roundhouse successfully pulled off another week of emerging artist celebrations, so keep track of them to follow more of their upcoming events!

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