Photo Courtesy of redbullacademy.com
Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) just debuted it’s ‘class of 2014′, a fresh crop of musicians set to travel to Tokyo for a whirlwind of recording sessions, lectures, collaborations, and performances in the city’s best clubs and music halls. Each year, the Academy selects 60 applicants to gather for 5 weeks to participate in lectures and workshops, collaborate with fellow musicians, and perform in a festival of events hosted in the city’s most famous venues. Previous years’ academies featured host cities like New York, Berlin, London, Melbourne, and Toronto. Producers, vocalists, DJs, and instrumentalists come together from across the globe in a new city each year.
This year, RBMA will be represented by musicians from 34 different nations,and for the first time, participants from Egypt and Kenya. For two weeks, each group of 30 musicians will have the opportunity to work in custom-built studios, with no deadlines or set quotas. Stephen O’Malley, a former lecturer at the RBMA in New York says “This isn’t about teaching people how to be popular or how to make loads of money, but how to be creative, how experimentation is key, how to make GOOD art, how they did it and how they continue to do it.”
Red Bull has expanded it’s influence sine it began in 1998. RBMA Radio (complete with an RBMA Radio app) features DJ sets from emerging artists, interviews, live recordings, and signature “fireside chats” features. RBMA also maintains an online magazine, and a video lecture archive hosted on Vimeo.
RBMA compares to an intense open house for musical talent- it hosts artists of all backgrounds, genres, methodologies, and skill-sets. It seems this year, hip-hop is the most popular genre for artists, closely followed by rock and electronic (specifically bass-inspired electronic).
So far we have high hopes for artists like:
See all 60 participants on RBMA’s original announcement here.
Look out for more features from FDRMX on notable RBMA artists in the upcoming weeks.