Vanessa Reed, chief executive of the PRS for Music Foundation, says this is not a "cash hand out". She says: "Momentum is a breakthrough moment for music in England, where it's now harder than in many other parts of the world for talented artists to access finance."
Something In The Air - An opera featuring a string quartet performing in four airborne helicopters, a dancing camel and 150 performers that was previously thought to be unstageable has received the opera and music theatre prize at this year's Royal Philharmonic Society awards ceremony. Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht was given its world premiere performances in August last year in a production directed by Graham Vick for the Birmingham Opera Company as part of the London 2012 Festival.
Theatre Funding - BBC charity the Performing Arts Fund will focus solely on supporting the theatre industry for the first time this year, with a total of £450,000 available to the professional and community sectors. The charity, which earns money through public voting on shows such as The Voice on BBC1, will finance two theatre-based schemes in 2013. One will award a total of £200,000 to professional theatre organisations looking to host a fellowship, while the other will give the community sector £250,000 to spend on training and development.
Novello Awards - Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sande scooped two prizes at this year's Ivor Novello songwriting awards. Her hit song Next To Me was named best song musically and lyrically, and also won the prize for most performed work. Other winners at the ceremony in London included Noel Gallagher, Marc Almond, Justin Hayward and Randy Newman. The annual awards, in their 58th year, celebrate songwriting and composing and are voted for by songwriters. Sande, who was not present to pick up her awards at the Grosvenor House hotel, performed at the London 2012 opening and closing ceremonies. Last month her album Our Version of Events beat a record set by The Beatles for the most consecutive weeks spent in the UK's Top 10 by a debut album.
In The Saleroom - A guitar played by John Lennon and George Harrison has sold for $408,000 (£269,000) at auction. The custom-made instrument, built in 1966 by the VOX company, was bought by an unidentified US buyer in New York. Harrison played I Am The Walrus on the guitar in a scene from Magical Mystery Tour in 1967. Lennon used it in a video for Hello, Goodbye later that year.
(Jim Evans)
