South Bank Sky Arts Award nominations

Two Maestro Arts musicians have been nominated in this year's South Bank Sky Arts Awards for 2021: Lawrence Power for his Lockdown Commissions and the Ragged Music Festival, co-founded by Pavel Kolesnikov.

Power devised his Lockdown Commissions project early on in the pandemic, commissioning composers to write pieces for him that he filmed in empty venues around the UK. He has performed world premieres by composers including Cassandra Miller, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Garth Knox and William Marsey in venues such as Southbank Centre, the Coliseum, Wigmore Hall and Snape Maltings, with videos available on his YouTube and social media channels.

Kolesnikov co-founded the first Ragged Music Festival at the Ragged Museum in East London with Samson Tsoy in 2019. The South Bank Sky Arts Award nomination recognises the second edition, which went ahead last year in the face of Covid restrictions. This year's festival was held in May, with musical colleagues including Lawrence Power, Alina Ibragimova and Mark Padmore.

Phillip Edgar-Jones, Director of Sky Arts, Sky, said: 'After a year like no other where performers and artists across all the genres have found new and innovative ways of working it's with a real sense of excitement and pride that we welcome them back to celebrate all their amazing achievements in 2020.'

The awards ceremony will take place on 18 July.