Scotland’s national music prize, The SAY Award, has announced today that the Live at the Longlist event will take place at The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on Friday 26th July. The event will feature live performances from some of Scotland’s best creative talent and SAY alumni including C Duncan, Kobi Onyame and a special collaboration between Idlewild’s Rod Jones and Modern Studies. The twenty outstanding Scottish albums that will make up The SAY Award Longlist for 2019 will be exclusively revealed on a night celebrating the incredible strength and diversity of Scottish music.
Rod Jones of Idlewild said of the event: “I’m really excited to be collaborating with Modern Studies. I’m a big fan of their ‘Welcome Strangers’ album and the way they interweave folk, classical and pop. I look forward to seeing what we can bring to each other’s songs…”
Announced in front of a live audience by hosts Vic Galloway and Nicola Meighan, Live at the Longlist ensures music fans are the first to know which albums make up this year’s coveted list. The live gig will be raising funds for Help Musicians Scotland – The SAY Award’s charity partner for 2019 –ensuring it is a night of celebration, recognition and inclusivity for all in the Scottish music industry.
Album submissions close at MIDNIGHT TOMORROW (31 May 2019), with over 260 albums already submitted. Submit now at WWW.SAYAWARD.COM.
Once submissions close and all eligible albums have been collated, 100 impartial ‘Nominators’, chosen from sectors including journalism, broadcast and radio, music retail and live music venues, will consider the titles from The SAY Award’s Eligible Albums list, nominating their five favourite albums and ranking them in order of preference. ‘Nominators’ include specialists in a variety of genres, such as jazz, classical, electronic and traditional folk, as well as key influencers from elsewhere in the arts. The SMIA assigns a score to each title in a Nominator’s Top 5, before announcing the 20 highest scoring albums as The SAY Award Longlist for 2019 on 26 July.
The Longlist is then whittled down to a Shortlist of 10 albums, one of which will be chosen by music fans via an online public vote and the others decided by The SAY Award judging panel. Previous judges have included the composer Craig Armstrong, Turner Prize-winning artists Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz, Filmmaker Lynne Ramsey, DJ and Promoter Sarra Wild, Edinburgh International Festival Director Fergus Linehan, Sub Club Partner/Director Barry Price and Scottish Ballet’s Sophie Laplane.
Previous winners of The SAY Award include Young Fathers ‘Cocoa Sugar’ (2018), Sacred Paws ‘Strike A Match’ (2017), Anna Meredith ‘Varmints’ (2016), Kathryn Joseph ‘Bones You Have Thrown Me And Blood I’ve Spilled’ (2015), Young Fathers ‘Tape Two’ (2014), RM Hubbert ‘Thirteen Lost & Found’ (2013) and the inaugural winner Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat ‘Everything’s Getting Older’ (2012).