BBC Radio 6 Music Festival 2021 goes digital, Michael Kiwanuka, Laura Marling + Bicep to headline
Bicep, Michael Kiwanuka, and Laura Marling have been announced as this year's BBC Radio 6 Music Festival headliners, as the festival shifts online on the weekend of 26-28th March.
Streamable on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, all three headline sets were filmed at Alexandra Palace in line with UK government guidelines and will be available to watch across the entire weekend. Snippets from each set will be shown on BBC Four on 26th March alongside interviews with Kiwanuka and Marling about being a musician during the past year of not being able to perform in front of audiences.
There are additional sets from Poppy Ajudha, Black Country, New Road, Dry Cleaning, Nubya Garcia, Shame, and Working Men's Club, all of which were filmed recently at the BBC Radio Theatre in BBC Broadcasting House.
During the weekend, memorable sets from previous years will also be available to stream including Anna Calvi (Liverpool 2019), Brittany Howard (Camden, 2020), Foals (Bristol, 2016), Little Simz (Liverpool, 2019), Róisín Murphy (Camden, 2020), Savages (Bristol, 2016), Sleater-Kinney (Tyneside, 2015), The Fall (Tyneside, 2015), The National (Manchester, 2014), Thundercat (Glasgow, 2017), Underworld (Bristol, 2016) and more.
About the festival moving to digital, Head of BBC Radio 6 Music's Samantha Moy says: "“With venues closed across the UK, we are determined to celebrate live music, as we know 6 Music listeners are missing gigs as much as we are. So, we’ve raided the 6 Music Festival archives and moved heaven and earth to record some new performances, to ensure that the festival will go on!”
BBC Radio 6 Music Festival is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds on 26-28th March.