Music Conference Networking Skills

Co-founder at pértiga music, a management, booking & production agency based in Barcelona specialized in boosting and giving visibility to female talent: we are girls managing girls that make music. Created in 2017, our company has gathered since then a family of very talented female musicians. Our roster includes: Agost, MAVICA, Marta Knight, Weia, Audrä and ¡Viva la novia!. We have booked our bands at many venues and festivals and we are looking for new opportunities to help them expand their music. We also promote concerts with bands leaded by girls under the name ‘Las Chicas lo Petan’ to create a space for music made by women in the venue circuit. A total of fourteen bands have gone through these music sessions in the 7 editions (including one in London) that we have organized so far. This year we are planning to carry our sessions to new cities!

PYST – distribution and promotions company

Shanghai based Alessandro is a music industry professional as well as a producer/musician, currently working for China’s top indie distributor Kanjian Music (看见音乐). He relocated to China after completing his master degree in Music Industry Management and Enterprise at London Metropolitan University in 2015. Alessandro specializes in the Chinese music market and has been consulting both Western and Chinese labels. With Kanjian, Alessandro has been part of the inaugural edition of the Electric Zoo Shanghai festival, and enjoyed working with the Grammy-nominated artist ZHU and indie labels such as Hyperdub, Hospital Records and Ninjatune. The producer and singer-songwriter Alessandro is actively ghostwriting for Chinese labels and touring local clubs with his drum and bass project “Fractale” and as a drummer for Shanghai based metal band Alpaca.

Ailsa works as a member of the Wide Events team where she has been involved in various events such as Off The Record, Wide Days and Born To Be Wide evening socials. Her interest in the music industry began with working as a studio assistant at Banana Row when she was a teenager. Ailsa also currently works as a Management Assistant with Edinburgh based artist management company, A Modern Way, working with artists including Fatherson, Idlewild, Tom Joshua and Zoe Graham.

Adam, originally from North Wales, now based in Cardiff, has worked in various roles across the South Wales music scene including Music/Events/Tour Management, Promotion, Festival planning/booking, and Social Media. As well as working alongside various acts in Cardiff as a Band/Artist Manager. Moving down to study in the Welsh capital back in 2007, Adam started honing his skills working alongside companies such as Orchard Live, Fizzi Events, HUB Festival, Clwb Ifor Bach and Sŵn Festival where he worked as a Production Manager, Events Assistant and Volunteer Coordinator, starting as a volunteer back in 2009. Adam has also Tour Managed several acts in and around the U.K and central Europe, which included accounting, stage/backline tech, merchandise seller and driver. As well as working in the music industry Adam is an avid film photographer of landscapes, street/urban scenes and gig/backstage music photography, using his access to recording artists to get a unique perspective and behind the scenes look at a day on tour.

Abbie currently presents BBC Music Introducing in Kent & can be heard regularly covering shows on BBC Radio 1. She is also the presenter of the very popular music podcast, Live Lounge Uncovered, which brings listeners behind the scenes of Radio 1’s home of live music. Abbie has been recognised by the Radio Academy as one of the brightest young stars in radio, recently featuring in their esteemed 30 under 30 list. Abbie’s huge contribution to both the radio & music industry was then celebrated further when she was inducted into the Roll of Honour at Music Week’s Women In Music Awards 2018. Abbie is the mastermind behind Good Karma Club, a club night championing the hottest new bands around. Previous alumni include The Amazons, Pale Waves and Tom Grennan. The inaugural Good Karma Club tour was in April 2018 with 7 sold out dates around the UK and 2019 sees another big UK tour and a stage at South by Southwest Festival.

Project Manager at Sound City. Venue manager at North Shore Troubadour

Ed has over a dozen years of programming experience in London and nationally across the UK. Currently Ed is lead Talent Buyer for Latitude Festival, Festival Republic’s 45,000 capacity music and arts event in Suffolk. Latitude won Best Major Festival in 2017’s UK Festival Awards, and 2019’s event is headlined by Lana Del Rey [UK Exclusive], Snow Patrol, Underworld and George Ezra. Other acts range from Sons Of Kemet to Slaves, Neneh Cherry to MØ, Cat Power to Loyle Carner; plus a large arts, comedy and dance programme. Prior to working at Festival Republic, Ed freelance programmed and location scouted for Apple Music, VICE, BBC among others, led DHP Family’s expansion in to London, was Head Of Events and Venues for VICE UK where he oversaw a portfolio of four venues and five bars and restaurants, programmed over 100 events per month and managed all of VICE, Noisey, i-D, Munchies and affiliated verticals’ physical activations. He has a history of championing undiscovered music and running counter-cultural events independently and on behalf of major brands including Samsung, Levis, Diagio and many more.

Rachel Jepson has been a singer, songwriter and performer for over 20 years. Rachel is also a qualified counsellor and supervisor working with organizations such as the NHS, BUPA and AnxietyUK. She founded Counselling for Musicians at the start of 2017, working with musicians and their mental health. Rachel has counselled students at BIMM and FutureWorks amongst others and delivers training on how tutors can help manage students suffering with anxiety and depression. She hosted her own radio show on Reform Radio called ‘Mind Over Music’ talking to Musicians about mental health in the music industry. Rachel is frequently asked to speak at music conferences including We Are Robots and the AIM industry conference. She is a published author on the subject of mental health in the music industry, and has been nominated for a ‘Women In Music Award’ for her work with musicians and mental health.

Phil Bridges is the founder of The Mind Map, a Mental Health First Aid instructor and journalist.

In his 20 year career on BBC radio he has established himself as the go-to man for championing the next big thing. Having begun on hospital radio in Cardiff, Huw quickly became known for his knack for discovering young talent and soon became a BBC Radio 1 DJ. He focuses on music heard via BBC Introducing, and presents on BBC 6 Music, World service and Radio Cymru in Welsh. On top of his busy radio career, he also curates the BBC Music Introducing stage that showcases the UK’s best emerging artists at Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, and Radio One’s Big Weekend, writes and dj’s, curates and lectures. He has hosted the main stage at Reading for ten years, and has curated the Lake Stage at Latitude since the launch of the festival.

Eluned Hâf is Head of Wales Arts International the international arm of the Arts Council of Wales. Trained as a journalist Eluned has worked for BBC Wales Reuters ITV and S4C. she speaks five languages and has worked as a press officer in the European Parliament. The highlights of her career include writing the winning application for and leading WOMEX in Cardiff in 2013 and leading the cultural programme for Welsh Government Trade Mission to China in Spring 2017 2018 and 2019. Eluned sits on the management board of the Arts Council and the British Council Wales Advisory Committee.

Chris presents the Early Breakfast Show (5 – 7.30am) on BBC Radio 6 Music and has interviewed some of music’s biggest stars, including Calvin Harris; The Killers; Florence Welch; Dave Grohl and Jack White. He is a notable champion of 2019 Brits Critics Choice Winner, Sam Fender.

Chris is a Radio 4 documentary presenter, most recently presenting an in depth programme investigating the links between contemporary music and politics. He is also regular voice on BBC Radio 5 live. On screen, Chris often appears on BBC Breakfast TV, BBC News and has presented films on BBC Inside Out.

He is an experienced festival, awards and conference host as well as a successful voice over artist. He writes blogs for the BBC website and has written for the Huffington Post, Music Week and UK Music.

Chris recently appeared on Pointless Celebrities and captained the victorious Nottingham University team on Celebrity University Challenge. He is also a Celebrity Mastermind runner-up…his specialist subject? Coronation Street!

In 2018 Chris made cameo appearances in the BBC 1 daytime drama Doctors and played Dylan Thomas at the Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea.

Chris is proud to be an Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust.

Cutting his teeth in his home town of Luton, looking after small live venues and night clubs, John had the opportunity to take over The Freebutt in Brighton. Reestablishing The Freebutt as an important grassroots venue alongside Andy Rossiter, Alex Murray and Tom Denney, it came under fire due to noise complaints within a year. John moved back to Luton to work alongside the arts council to delivery a 3 day multi venue festival. Now looking after 2 of his favourite venues, The Old Blue Last, and the Sebright Arms in London.

Vocalist of Wrexham based but internationally renowned pop punk artist Neck Deep, Ben Barlow is the band’s co-founder and mouthpiece. Ben’s keen ear for melody and insightful turn of lyrical phrase has come to typify Neck Deep, and make them stand out from the crowd as a true leader on the worldwide stage. At just 24 years old, Ben has led ND through a thriving 7 year career to date, during which they have toured the globe multiple times, scored two Top 10 albums in the UK and US, and sold out prestigious venues such as Manchester Apollo, London Brixton Academy and New York’s Playstation Theatre.

Chloe is the Digital Marketing Lead at award-winning design agency View Creative in Rhos-on-Sea and has been working within a variety of industries from creative arts & music events to luxury travel for just over five years. Chloe specialises in data-driven strategy, social media and the technical SEO of web and social projects throughout North Wales and the rest of the UK. Alongside her work with View Creative Agency, Chloe also executes workshops with small businesses and individuals looking to improve their presence online, leading a number of bespoke practical sessions on the basic principals of digital marketing and the challenges the practice presents today. Outside of her digital cocoon, you can find Chloe flexing her vocal chords and working on small musical side projects.

Recently appointed by Believe Music as the UK Manager for TuneCore distribution, A&R specialist Nathan Barley Phillips is responsible for all relationships with self-releasing artists, managers and industry partners working with TuneCore in the UK.

Prior to this role, Nathan formed Basick Records in 2005 and set about the task of developing a forward thinking record label for heavy music. Releasing early material from emerging UK bands such as Enter Shikari and Monuments, the BASICK label soon became synonymous with the cutting edge of heavy genres, going on to release music from Misery Signals, Bury Tomorrow, SikTh, Skyharbor, Devil Sold His Soul and Napoleon among many others.
Now a fully-fledged international record label nominated three times in a row for a Metal Hammer Golden God ‘Best Indie Label’ Award, BASICK continues to be one of the forerunners in its field.

Nathan also recently sat on the board of directors at the Association Of Independent Music for 4 years.
AIM is a trade body organisation based in the UK that represents over 800 music companies, from some of the largest and most respected independent record labels in the world, to small start-ups and individual artists.

Joedi Langley is the Head of the Creative Industries Sector team of the Welsh Government, having previously been the Senior Business Development Manager for TV & Film. Joedi heads a team which focuses on a number of sub-sectors with Digital media, TV & Film and music being key priorities for the sector going forward.

Lea Beckerleg is Senior Strategy Manager for the Creative Industries Sector team of the Welsh Government. Lea is passionate about music and has been instrumental in increasing the level of support available for the grassroots music industry. Over the past two years Lea’s main focus has been working with Ministers, colleagues and stakeholders to shape the Creative Wales strategy in order to provide flexible and agile support to the Creative Industries Sector going forward, and to ensure that Welsh Government support mechanisms are aligned with the fast-paced industry in Wales.

Mark Thomas is Wales’ most successful film and tv composer ever. He is ranked high in the top one hundred successful composers in Britain in all genres. He won a Bafta Cymru Award for his score to the feature film “Twin Town” and was nominated for an Emmy Award in Hollywood for his theme to the popular series “Episodes”.

Mark’s career began as a freelance violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra and various London session orchestras recording Hollywood films in the 1980’s. He has composed music for over 100 films and tv series including Aardman Animation’s globally successful award winning “Shaun The Sheep” and the tv series “Brief Encounters”,”Episodes”, “Stella”, “Being Eileen” and “Benidorm” and “Russell Howard’s Globetrotting”.

In film music, Mark has been equally prolific, with “Last Summer”, “Zoo”, “The Magic Roundabout Movie”,“Dog Soldiers”, “Under Milk Wood’and “Twin Town”. He has received 12 Bafta nominations and has composed music for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Mark has enjoyed a creative collaboration with director Kevin Allen that spans over twenty years.
CUES4U.COM
Mark is currently establishing a brand new, online MCPS / PRS production music library.
CUES4U.COM will launch globally in Autumn 2019.

Rooting around in the creative bouillabaisse of Kevin Allen’s back catalogue; it’s hard not to gasp at the exceptional melange and the
sheer diversity of a Welshman who definitely knows his cockles from his laver bread.

A submarine engineer’s youngest son, Allen was brought up in England, Malta and Singapore before settling in his motherland, Wales, at the age of 10. Having cut his directorial teeth as the inaugural BBC video diarist reporting the insane world of football hooligans at Italia 90 – his classic documentary On the March with Bobby’s Army was the first of a collection of unique video-diary films – before unleashing his first pean to Wales, his debut, Bafta nominated cult feature film Twin Town – deemed to be magnificent, distasteful, authentic, inspirational and terrifying in equal measures. Allen then leapt, gazelle like, to the Los Angeles’ call, directing Warner Bros’ satirical hairdressing gem The Big Tease before departing on a year long motorhome odyssy, researching and writing a commissioned studio film about elderly Viagra dealers in the deep American South… that somehow never got made.

Los Angeles was indeed a strange and soporiphic base for the boy from Swansea, and having wooed his glorious bride to a stunning marriage ceremony in the sizzling Death Valley desert, Allen decided to cash in his hard earned Hollywood chips and helm MGM’s big budget kids action adventure flick, Agent Cody Banks, before riding off to deepest rural Ireland to build an exquisite timber home from which they would rear their 4 young children and breed a large herd of Saddle Back pigs.

Comfortably interned in Kavannagh’s ‘Stony Grey Soil’ of County Monaghan, Allen then responded to the shift of tectonic plates and the smattering of fairy dust which created (with ‘Butcher Boy’ author and like minded rapscallion, Pat McCabe) the sublime and infamous Flat Lake Literary & Arts Festival. Replete with the late laureate, Seamus Heaney, and a magnificent role call of literary giants in a circus-tented borderland field, The Flat Lake was considered by those lucky enough to attend, to be the most perfect, intellectual and wildly beautiful festivals in the UK & Ireland.

Somewhat fed up with the spectre of insolvency and three relentlessly wet summers, Allen left his tractor to Flamenco off to Spain where he set up and directed the first cheesy hit series of Benidorm for ITV, receiving a Bafta nominatio, three tons of premium pig feed and a curious absence of back end royalties for his trouble.

This unique journey with Hollywood ‘n Hooligans, Poets ‘n Pig Farmers, perhaps provided the perfect groundwork then for his ultimate love letter to Wales, and the lush, sexy, critically acclaimed creation that is Under Milk Wood. Barnstorming and raunchy, ushered in by Verdi and a Welsh male voice choir, this utterly beautiful vision of Dylan Thomas’ seminal offering of magical prose poetry sees ‘Allen the film director’ at his outrageous best. The Welsh language version of the film was also shortlisted for a foreign language Oscar.

Next, comes an exotic fusion of much of the above. Allen has written a revival of his epic cult hit, Twin Town. It’s rumoured that TIN TOWN, set in the West Wales town of Llanelli, entertains a concept based of a pair of female bent cops… and sheep dung – so, it’s no wonder that Mark Kermode recently compared him to the great Ken Russell … which, although quite a compliment, is also slightly misguiding – because there is literally no one quite like him.

Sara Jane Lovett – London Evening Standard

Emma has loved live music ever since attending a school Battle of the Bands competition circa 1999.
As Programming Director at From The Fields, she is responsible for overseeing music bookings across the festival portfolio. This includes programming over 20 stages across Bluedot, Kendal Calling and Off The Record festivals annually, as well as any one-offs or special projects.
A lover of new music, she’s never happier than watching a crowd go nuts to a great live band… whether in a dark room or a (usually) damp field.

Ingrid is the Head of Communication and Programme Curator of the international showcase festival Tallinn Music Week, and the music and arts festivals Station Narva and Kumu ÖÖ in Estonia. She’s a seasoned music journalist and events promoter, focusing on championing the underdog, and has aworked as a TV producer (MTV Baltics, Estonian Public Broadcasting channels). She’s also lectured at the Estonian Academy of Arts about pop culture and music journalism, specializing in the state of the post-subcultural realm in the metamodernist era.

Adam Ryan is the Festival curator for The Great Escape. A role he has held for 5 years. The Great Escape is the largest new music conference and festival in Europe and has been running for 14 years. The Great Escape takes place in Brighton (UK) over three days in May showcasing over 450 artists. Representing around 27 countries, across 30 plus venues. Over 4000 music industry delegates and professionals attended each year from around the globe.

Killer B Music has been booking and event managing festivals, events and events for over 12 years, our portfolio of festivals has included: Hop Farm Music Festival, FIB Benicassim, The Mighty Boosh Festival, Costa de Fuego, Black Deer, Wood Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, Desertfest, Zoo Project UK, The Brick Lane Takeover, The Magic Loungeabout, Synergy Live, Parklife (South Africa), Roko Nakyts, Bliuzo Naktys and Galapagai (Lithuania).
KB also books and event manages large-scale shows, our last 2 shows were Kings of Leon at Newcastle Football Club and Sarah Brightman and the Chinese Philharmonic Orchestra, in Beijing, China.
We take care of bookings for corporate parties, private events and launches. We also work with various brands when they want to align with bands.

Kaptin is Head of Music for Boomtown Festival, one of the UK’s largest festivals where over 600 artists from around 30 countries perform in a theatrical pop up city. He is a co-host on Ujima 98Fm’s Super Soca Show and a DJ under the name AAA Badboy, playing at various clubs and festivals around the world and recording mixes for BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra among others.