Snowdrift News 1 – Music News

2010 was an action filled first year for Snowdrift Productions and Harald Haltvik (aka. DJ Snowdrift). Here is an update from the projects of 2010, especially the latter ones:

1. Pre-Production:
Snowdrift has been working with a handful of songwriters at various stages of developing their original material. The activity has mainly revolved around arrangements and production planning and has run through the whole year.

2. Runway mixtapes:
DJ Snowdrift has made mix-tapes for several events by hair-stylist Andreas Constantinou throughout 2010. The aim of the collaborations has been to create a complete experience in sound, vision and modelling around the hair-styles that have been exhibited. Dave Sander of 1ClickPhotography has captured the events beautifully through the camera.


With some of the models after a show.


Model line-up after show.
(Photos by Dave Sander)


3. Hope For Justice charity gig:
Big happening at the charming Old Tramshed in Saltaire. Featuring DJ Agent M & DJ Snowdrift, Starling, Marmozets, The Coopers, Dolly Peters, Mark Stevens and Kate Walker. One amazing night!


DJ's view: panorama of the Old Tramshed.

4. DJ-ing:
DJ Snowdrift has appeared at several events in the UK through 2010. The repertoire has been from the 60’s and 70’s and containing Soul, R’n B and Funk, with the occasional added flavas’ of neo-soul, modern R’n B and Hip-Hop. Most of the events have been collaborations with the one and only Steven Lynch, aka. DJ Agent M.

Stephen Lynch - DJ Agent M

Harald Haltvik - DJ Snowdrift

5. London Jazz Festival:
On the more relaxing note I had a great time attending a concert by one of my former lecturers. Mr. Jeremy Monteiro, aka. “Singapore’s King of Swing” played in Soho one night during London Jazz Festival.


Jeremy Monteiro Trio at London Jazz Festival

Snowdrift News 2 – Professional News

Professional and academic events at the tail-end of 2010:

1. ‘From File to Feature’ Industry Workshop, London:
In mid-November Tyrell CCT arranged a showcase for several new media products at Soho Theatre in London. Amongst the products were: Avid's Media Composer 5 and ISIS 5000, Object Matrix's disk-based repository, Parking from Marquis' archiving solution and more. The event was especially interesting for former Digidesign customers who wanted to see what systems now will be in family with Pro Tools music production software. A personal favourite was Object Matrix who presented a very versatile data-safety system that would work excellently as a shared central storage for smaller studios with multiple suites.


‘From File to Feature’ event at Soho Theatre Bar

2. Pro Tools 9 presentation by AVID:
With a brand new generation of Pro Tools just hitting the marked, AVID invited their customers to showcases around the UK. In early December 2010 they were at Production Room in Leeds to introduce us to the new features of their software and hardware.



Pro Tools 9 demo at 'Production Room' in Leeds. Shout to James Ivey who ran the demo.

3. Paper presentation by Arild Berg, London:
Former Norwegian Radio journalist Arild Berg presented his research-findings on the correlation (and the lack thereof) between public funding of ethnic music-projects and social integration. My friend Dr. Shzr Ee Tan of the Royal Academy of Music was one of the hosts.