Øystein Baadsvik received the Lakshminarayana International Award

During a tour in India with Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival tubist Øystein Baadsvik received the Lakshminarayana International Award.

From the award web-page:
It is awarded to individuals who have made momentous contributions to their respective artistic domains. Each awardee is a legend in his/her own right.

The first award in 1997 was given to Lord Yehudi Menuhin, and was presented to him by the President of India His Excellency K.R. Narayanan. Subsequently, the award has been presented to eminent artists, creative geniuses and living legends.

Others who has received the award are Al Jarreau, Jean Luc Ponty, George Duke and Stanley Clarke. More about the award: http://www.lgmf.org/awards/ Dr. L. Subramaniam is available for a comment on +91 95-35-100100.

Baadsvik is currently touring India with legendary violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam and LA based flutist Hubert Laws. The program also features Kavita Kavita Krishnamurthy who is one of Indias most well known singers, featured in more than a thousand Bollywood movies. She is credited nearly fifty platinum albums. The tour is part of Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival and visits the following Indian cities: Chennai, Alleppey, Bangalore, Bombay and Hyderabad. The last concert is today in Delhi.

During the tour Baadsvik performs his own music as well as music composed by Subramaniam. The festival has been running for more than 20 years and is extremely popular with sometimes more than 35.000 people at a single concert.

For more images, background stories look at facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/oystein.baadsvik.

"Flight of the Bumblebee" World Record

For many years, the world record for the fastest performance of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" remained unchallenged. Jörg Wachsmuth, solo tubist with the Dresden Philharmonic, recently played the piece on a giant tuba in less than 54 seconds. The previous record for the fastest performance stood at 54.24 seconds, achieved by British violinist Ben Lee. Originally the piece was intended to last three minutes. Wachsmuth played the piece in 53.82 seconds. The particular challenge for Wachsmuth was that he wanted to break the record on a gigantic tuba. With a weight of 50 kilograms and a height of 2.05 meters, it's quite an epic instrument. With 20 meters of tubing, the tube length on it is twice as long as that of a normal tuba. The instrument is a custom design from makers in the Vogtland region. It was built in 2010 and is on display in the Museum of Music in Markneukirchen, Germany.