Girls Get Music
Birmingham girl group Belle Sorelle are on a mission…to get girls into music! Studying on the Freelance Music Apprenticeship scheme, they are working with Access to Music to encourage young women to get into the music industry, in what is still, a very male dominated world.

The Apprentices, who reached the last 15 of X Factor last year, will be visiting schools across Birmingham talking to students about roles not typically seen as opportunities for females including managers, promoters and sound engineers.

Belle Sorelle will also be performing at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry on March 20th and at the Atom Live Convention at popular venue The Drum on March 23rd. Visit their website

Student Impresses at Exciting Remix Competition
James Taff, a student on the Digital Musician course impressed judges recently at an exciting remix competition. James, with his music partner Jay, form JT2. The competition, led by prominent hard house scene leader James Nardi, was for London based label, Killer Hurts. The challenge was to remix the popular Luvdup by Nardi. JT2 reached the top 5 out of a huge number of hopefuls.

JT2 have had releases on various hard house labels, their latest release, on Canadian based label The Beat Ranch, is called Mircodot and is part of a 6 track EP the label are releasing called The Beat Ranch Extended EP. Check them out here

4Flava head to Miami
4Flava have had a great career so far and now they’re heading over to Miami to work on a brand new album. But they’re not just going for the sunshine- the group are set to work with some top producers and writers who can name Leona Lewis, Alicia Keys and Alexandre Burke as previous clients!

2009 saw 4Flava perform at the O2 Arena with the likes of Taio Cruz, Miss Frank from the X-Factor and Sway, in front of over 2,000 people. However, Zahra Palmer, who studied on the Vocal Artist course, says this is a fairly small audience compared to their 180,000 audience figures at Gay Pride in London!
Visit their myspace

Middleman at South by South West Festival
Middleman are set to perform at the famous South by South West festival in Texas this summer. The invite came as a complete shock to the band, Krish said ‘we just got an email from them inviting us to play - we feel so honoured to be asked!’

The band have had tracks played on Radio 1 on a number of shows and last year they did a Maida Vale session for Huw Stephens which Krish, who studied on the Popular Music Studies course, notes as, ‘one of the best moments so far!’

Middleman are now looking for funding to get them to Texas for the festival. Check them out here

Lady Leshurr Unleashes…
Lady Leshurr, real name Melesha O’Garro was nominated his year as best newcomer of the year at the Official Mix Tape awards 2010. The prestigious awards ceremony, hosted by Kwame and Kele le Roc took place in Portsmouth in January.

22 year old Melesha, an ex student on the Vocal Artist course, said it came as a complete shock and she still doesn’t know who put her forward! Check out her myspace here

Dub Crookz signed to Dubstar
Birmingham duo Jamie Pinner and Leandros Ioannidis, aka, Dub Crookz have recently been signed to well respected dub step label Dubstar. The pair are clearly causing a stir; not only have they just been signed, but their promo, which was released just before Christmas, sold out within a week to hungry fans. They said that the record label deal ‘came out of nowhere’ and they ‘snapped up the chance to be signed’.

Lee studied on the Creative Music Technology course and is now studying on the Music Educator Programme. Dub Crookz’ latest release Never Scared is out now and is available from all good record stores. Check out Dub Crooks here