Accepting the trophy for best pop solo performance for her song Someone Like You, Adele said, "Seeing as it's a vocal performance, I need to thank my doctors, I suppose, who brought my voice back."
Theatre Opening - A replacement for the old Westminster Theatre will finally open this autumn. The St James Theatre will launch at the end of September, housed in a residential development near the Victoria Palace Theatre on the site of the old Westminster Theatre. It will feature two performance spaces, designed by Foster Wilson Architects, which was also responsible for the similarly-sized Trafalgar Studios. Unlike the Trafalgar Studios, though, the venue will host a bar/ restaurant, which will subsidise the work on stage.
The team running the St James will be led by artistic director David Gilmore - best known as the director of West End musical Grease - and West End general manager Guy Kitchenn as executive director.
Gilmore, who has previously served as artistic director of the Watermill and Nuffield Theatres, told The Stage, "Our plan is for shows to run for six to eight weeks with us. Perhaps the way to think of us is like an Off-Broadway theatre. A show could come to us for an awful lot less than putting it on Shaftesbury Avenue. If it's an absolute sell out, you can pick it up and move it, and if six or eight weeks has just about exhausted its audience, then fine.
Ticket Sales - Secondary ticketing website Seatwave has opened its first shop, close to London's O2 arena. The firm says the store will give fans "last-minute access" to gigs, allowing them to buy and sell unwanted tickets, or pick up tickets bought online. As with the Seatwave website, sellers will set their own price. But the O2 distanced itself from the firm and encouraged people "wanting to attend gigs to buy tickets through the official O2 website".
Play On - Music for All, the charity of the UK musical instrument industry has announced the first annual National Learn to Play Day taking place on 31 March 2012. On this day, the UK's musical instrument shops will open their doors and offer free instrument 'taster' lessons to the general public.
Paul McManus, chief executive of Music For All commenting on the event said, "Music for All knows how much music can change and enrich people's lives. We are hosting the annual Learn to Play Day to allow as many people as possible to experience the wonderful world of making music."
(Jim Evans)
