Stephen Shaw's Music Links

Access Key Details

Music Links: Live Music:-
STOCKPORT has a long musical heritage, largely hidden, little known, mostly forgotten - but we still have some remnants left, including Stockport Plaza Cinema and the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust Stockport Wurlitzer - one of the largest in Europe, built for Paramount. The only "Publix" model outside America. Recordings available from the site.
Nearby, Manchester also still has a fine Cavaille-Coll Organ which few locals know about.
To keep up to date with new organ CDs, try Organ Historical Society, Organ1st (MSS), and Pipe Organ Presentations

Stockport is home to good brass bands, including the Vernon (Formerly Poynton) Brass Band and Poynton Youth Brass Band. Brass bands include Stockport Brass (formerly BT Band, formerly POEU Band) Band, Fairey Band, and a steel drum band the Stockport Pantonic All Stars, Stockport Recorder College. And more.
To check out brass band CDs, look at the listing at Harrogate Band's excellent web site- you will need to look at each band's web site to see what arrangements they have to distribute their CDs. (Alas, some bands record lots of CDs and then make it impossible for anyone to buy any!!!).

Also playing in Stockport is Stockport Symphony Orchestra. We have an absolutely first class Stockport Youth Orchestra and an equally gifted Stockport Schools Band and Stockport Youth Wind Orchestra.
Brass Band news is available from 4 Bars Rest

Concerts held at Stockport Town Hall on one page.

The BBC Radio 4 UK Theme which was discontinued in April 2006. (Was played at 5.30am on handover of frequencies from World Service to Radio 4)

An interesting site, Unheard Beethoven has midi format files of music you haven't heard.
Some fine music MID files on offer from -
Classical Composers Midi | Classical Midi Connection | Herberts Midi Music || Music for Pianos (Midi)

Births and deaths of UK musicians at Music Remembrance || Listen to and watch the original Al Jolson.

MP3

Piano mp3's to download || Classical Composers mp3s.

Streaming Audio

The first links are direct to RealAudio streams:- Hober Thinking Radio | BBC World Service | BBC Radio News Summary

The BBC have a number of audio and video feeds- links to live radio and radio programs on demand are now spread all over their web site, but this BBC page - has links to each station- you just have to know in advance which station carries a program you want. The later audio links can use embedded realplayer (which seems to depend upon javascript) or click on the link "Use standalone" if there is one, to enable Realplayer directly. The BBC use the usual faulty javascript to look for realplayer. Radio 2 makes it very hard to listen on the internet.

If you are a fan of streaming mpegs, and have Realplayer 7+ or Winamp, streaming mp3's may be found at Shoutcast (mainly music some OTR).

To download old radio (OTR) MP3s, visit RadioLovers.com - with so many OTR sites now only offering paid for services or streams, it is nice to report that Internet Archive OTR has a growing collection, of often superior quality MP3s. Prefer RealAudio? Lots of streaming old radio programmes in RealAudio from otr.net (including some not on the Internet Archive site).

A useful source of UK radio feeds is Radiofeeds. If your browser does not support the protocols, links to rtsp addresses can be pasted into Realplayer whilst addresses in the form mms can be pasted into Mediaplayer. Addresses of the form http://43.43.43.43/radioname require the very latest Windows Media Player.

For world radio stations, visit PublicRadioFan- very large listing - same notes as above UK page.. Streaming European Classical and Jazz music streams.

Access Key Details