New Leadership Bluegrass alumna

Fellow festival organisers: Chris Keenan (left) and Kathy Casey in Longford, 2009 (photo: Ronnie Norton)

Belated but heartfelt congratulations to Chris Keenan (organiser of the annual Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival in Longford town) who last month graduated in the IBMA's Leadership Bluegrass (LBG) class of 2010. Chris was the only class member from a European country this year. A month previously, she was a member of the 2nd European Bluegrass Summit.

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One of the aims of Leadership Bluegrass is to keep the bluegrass world abreast of music industry developments: for instance, LBG members are currently discussing the relative merits of CDs and digital media for supplying recordings to DJs and radio stations. To attempt a summary: on one hand, most DJs seem to prefer handling CDs, though the cost of posting these out to every station might be too great for a small label; on the other, digital recordings (in which a good deal of improvement in sound quality can be made over the normal mp3 standards) should save DJs much time in putting a programme together. The solution may be for the artist/record label to keep in touch with DJs, and respond to what they individually require. What's the experience of people over here?