Two Welsh musical development schemes are launching new chapters in their respective projects about now. In the case of Live Music Now Wales, the charity is looking for new musicians – solo artists or bands – playing in styles which they’ve pigeonholed as acoustic, rock and pop, classical, jazz, folk and world music. If you apply online at www.livemusicnow.org.uk/request_an_application_form, and are successful, you’ll be trained to work with, and perform for, those in care at residential homes, schools and hospitals. Meanwhile, on Tue 13 Dec the Forté Project will be unveiling the 10 chosen acts for its 2017 development scheme at Merthyr’s Redhouse venue. Said acts will work alongside industry mentors, gaining professional experience and giving their careers a boost
The grand, elegant and internationally admired Welsh National Opera is to visit Dubai, a city which is none of those things, in March for performances of Madam Butterfly and La Bohème. Taking place at the recently opened Dubai Opera House (which has common ground with WNO’s home venue, the Wales Millennium Centre – both initially enlisted architect Zaha Hadid before scrapping her designs), the company will also be working with pupils in Dubai schools and colleges during their visit. It’s part of a wider collaborative scheme, UK/UAE 2017, initiated by the British Council
The second album by heavy rock quartet Hark is released on Fri 24 Feb by French label Season Of Mist. The followup to 2014 debut Crystalline, recorded as a three-piece, the band – mostly Welsh in origin, currently scattered between here and Bristol – have added a second guitarist, Joe Harvatt, also of jazz-metallers Intensive Square. The nine resultant tracks, recorded in Leeds and Pontypool, are a definite step up from Crystalline. Production is razor-sharp, metallic and, to an extent, dials back to the two albums by Taint, singer Jimbob Isaac’s pre-Hark outfit
The Chattery, a restaurant and music venue in Swansea since 1977, is up for sale at the time of writing. Opened by Nigel Clatworthy and currently headed by Alex, his daughter, the Chattery specialises in Americana, folk and country-rock type music – they were early supporters of The Handsome Family in Wales, for example. Although Alex hopes to continue promoting gigs somewhere, the Chattery’s participation on that front will depend on the whims of the buyer – fingers crossed they’re the sympathetic kind, but nearly 40 years as an independent Swansea business is still a fine statistic. Before any major changes, though, they host bluegrass band The Grass Snakes on Sat 17 Dec
Welsh art collector Gerrion Jones is to revive his popular touring exhibition, Punk Forever, in his home town of Merthyr Tydfil in early 2017. The Redhouse venue will host it from Sat 21 Jan until Tue 21 Feb, and visitors will be able to see the work of three iconic punk-related figures: Jamie Reid, whose most notorious work was the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind The Bollocks album cover; James Cauty, whose punk principles were first adapted in conceptual rave crew The KLF and later in his politically-charged installations; and Billy Childish, a prolific titan of garage rock whose paintings espouse his anti-modern art ideology, which he calls Stuckism