Tricks up their sleeve
ALTHOUGH the likes of Coldplay and Travis may want you to believe otherwise, great pop is as much about image as music. And after your producer, perhaps the most vital appointment wannabe popsters can make is the designer who is going to create your record sleeve. Since they established
a graphic design consultancy back in the early 1990s, London-based duo Paul West and Paula Benson, aka Form, have been responsible for the covers for acts as diverse as Depeche Mode and Natalie Imbruglia (and one-time Billboard favourites Scritti Politti, whose name these days is probably best preceded by ''whatever happened to . . .'').
West and Benson are headlining the latest Long Lunch event in Edinburgh this Thursday, in which they will be telling anyone interested about their design ideas for music, books, television, streetwear and maybe even stage sets. The talk at the NMS Royal Museum Lecture Theatre starts at 7.30pm. Tickets are available from Analogue in Edinburgh's West Bow. For further information, visit the Long Lunch website at www.longlunch.com
Up for the prize
THE three young musicians in the running for this year's National Youth Orchestra of Scotland Staffa Award are, somewhat unusually, two bassoonists and a harpist. The wind players are Tomasz Gniatkowski from Trinity College and Adam Mackenzie from the Guildhall. The trio, selected from auditions at all eight British conservatoires (including the RSAMD),
is completed by Celine
Saout from the Royal
Academy of Music.
They now perform a programme of their choice at Pollok House on Thursday evening when the judges (conductors James Loughran and Julian Clayton and Louise Mitchell, above, of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall) will decide on the winner of the (pounds) 3000 prize. Tickets for the public competition are (pounds) 15 (including wine and canapes) and can be purchased from the venue
on 0141 616 6410.
Youth choir concert
THERE'S a return visit to Paisley for the National Youth Choir of Scotland's Chamber Choir at the weekend. Regular readers may recall that the choir toured Paisley, Ayr
and Dumfries last year for
the campus outreach gig,
which was organised by
Paisley University.
On Saturday, the choir will
be at Coats Memorial Baptist Church to perform classic choral pieces by Handel and Vivaldi and contemporary work from the pens of Musgrave, MacMillan, Laurisden, Corigliano and Thompson. A university spokesman said: ''We anticipate that the event will repeat the success of the inaugural concert, and are pleased to offer people in Paisley and neighbouring communities another chance to enjoy Scotland's finest youth choir.''
The concert starts at 7.30pm and admission is free but by ticket only, and these are available, on a first-come,
first-served basis, by calling 0141 848 3731.
Big night for Eejits
PARTNERSHIPS are made of this. Playwright Nicola McCartney, pictured, was recruited by East Glasgow Youth Theatre to mould their thoughts into their Tron Theatre production last month, The Hero Show. Now McCartney has co-opted three of the Eejits, as they are affectionately and acronymically
known, for her rehearsed reading at the Traverse in Edinburgh on Friday, June 4,
at 7.30pm.
Alison McCabe, Shaun Mooney and Garry Curran
will be joining seven professional actors to perform Cape Moon, an English translation of a work by Matsuda Masataka, which is part of an exchange project between Japanese and Scottish playwrights.
Billboard is edited by Keith Bruce. Contact: Herald Arts, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB. 0141 302 7019; or e-mail arts@theherald.co.uk
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