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Ahmad Tea Music Festival: Richard Ashcroft, Catfish and the Bottleman, Seafret
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June 24, 17:00
Muzeon 
Ahmad Tea Music Festival invites you to enjoy a wonderful open-air evening of great British music in a beautiful city center park in the seventh time. This year Festival, sponsored by the popular brand of English tea is also to be held in an open venue, perfect for summer events - the Museon Park of Arts. The headliners will be Richard Ashcroft, Catfish and the Bottleman and Seafret. Richard Ashcroft, the founder and vocalist of the legendary The Verve. For the first time in the Russia, songs from his solo work will be heard, as well as world-famous hits "Bitter Sweet Symphony", "The Drugs Do not Work" and "Sonnet". Catfish and the Bottleman - British rock band from Wales, exploding the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. In the winter, their first album, "The Balcony", written by frontman Van McCann, received platinum status in the UK. Their dense melodic guitar sound captures new wave, garydge, indie and grunge. The third participant of the Ahmad Tea Music Festival is a young band Seafret. The debut album of the acoustic duo from Yorkshire "Tell Me It's Real" was released a year ago. In Moscow, the Brit-pop romantics Jack Sedman (vocals) and Harry Drapper (guitar) will play new songs from the second, the upcoming album. Sincere and lyrical compositions like the wind from the North Sea broke into the British music scene and subdued the hearts of listeners. The musicians, who have moved to London, are longing for the sea, as the most of the guests of our summer festival.
The festival of British music "Ahmad Tea Music Festival" has been held in Moscow since 2011. The mission of the Festival is to become a bridge between music culture of Great Britain and Russia. Support for meaningful cultural initiatives is a multi-year marketing policy of the brand in Russia. For six years, the festival became part of the cultural landscape of the capital, and on its stage performed: PJ Harvey, The Libertines, Hot Chip, Elbow, Antony and the Johnsons, Alt-J, Django Django, The Maccabees, Bombay Bicycle Club, I Am Kloot, Peace, Erland and The Carnival, Fanfarlo, Palma Violets, Citizens !, Maxïmo Park, Klaxons.
Ahmad Tea Music Festival Headliners:
Richard Ashcroft
 As the frontman for the epic British drone-pop band the Verve, Richard Ashcroft proved himself the spiritual descendant of rock & roll icons like Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison -- rivetingly charismatic, menacingly serpentine, and possessed of an almost shamanic intensity, he embraced and articulated the anthemic fervor of rock music with a power and eloquence unparalleled by any of his contemporaries. Ashcroft was born September 11, 1971, in the Wigan suburb of Billinge, attending Upholland Comprehensive School alongside future Verve mates Simon Jones, Simon Tong, and Peter Salisbury .After losing his father at age 11, he fell under the influence of his stepfather, a member of the ancient secular order of the Rosicrucians, who regularly performed experiments in mind expansion and the healing arts. While a student at Winstanley College in 1989, Ashcroft co-founded Verve with bassist Jones, drummer Salisbury, and guitarist Nick McCabe; signing to Virgin's Hut imprint to issue their 1992 debut single, "All in the Mind," Verve earned widespread praise for their majestic, oceanic guitar pop, with the eminently quotable Ashcroft earning the dismissive nickname "Mad Richard" from the U.K. press.
Despite their critical acclaim, Verve often seemed at the mercy of forces outside their control -- while touring with the Lollapalooza festival in support of their 1993 debut LP, A Storm in Heaven, Ashcroft was hospitalized after suffering from severe dehydration, and within months the band also entered into a protracted legal battle with the American jazz label Verve, which resulted in an official name change to The Verve. Recorded under the influence of a massive intake of ecstasy, 1995's brilliant A Northern Soul effectively split the band apart, although Ashcroft re-formed the lineup a few weeks later. The re-formed Verve achieved international success with 1997's celebrated Urban Hymns, scoring a series of hits including "Bittersweet Symphony," "The Drugs Don't Work," and "Lucky Man"; however, legal hassles awarded 100-percent of "Bittersweet Symphony"'s publishing rights to ABKCO Music -- the song was built on a Rolling Stones sample -- and as friction between Ashcroft and McCabe resurfaced, the guitarist quit the group. Following a final tour, the Verve again disbanded, this time for good.
Ashcroft's solo debut "Alone with Everybody" followed in mid-2000. Later that fall, Ashcroft celebrated his solo success with a ten-date sold-out American tour. Two days prior to kickoff in Chicago, the entire tour was postponed due to Ashcroft's illness, and speculations were quickly linked to his previous drug-using behavior with the Verve. Those rumors were also wiped out quickly, and the U.S. dates were rescheduled for January 2001. The following year, Ashcroft returned with his soul-searching, spiritual second album, "Human Conditions". Over the next few years, Ashcroft returned to living a quiet life with his family. He also inked a recording contract with Parlophone after his longtime label home, Hut, went bankrupt in mid-2004. Ashcroft's long-awaited third album, "Keys to the World", was released in March 2006.
Shortly after the release of "Keys to the World", rumors started circulating that the Verve were set to reunite. The band confirmed these rumors in 2007, playing a brief tour at the end of the year and then setting to work on a new album. Punningly entitled Forth, the record appeared in the summer of 2008 and was a reasonable success, yet the bandmembers didn't weather their reunion well, splitting once more in the summer of 2009. Ashcroft then formed the solo project RPA & the United Nations of Sound, whose debut appeared in the summer of 2010 in every territory but the U.S., where it was released in early 2011. Ashcroft followed this up six years later with his fifth studio album, These People in 2016. The release was recorded in Ashcroft’s home studio in London and features orchestration from erstwhile collaborator Wil Malone. Lyrically focused on conflict and bereavement and composed of lush strings and delicate textures, the record was preceded by the single "This Is How It Feels."
He is good friends with Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and Coldplay's Chris Martin (whom Ashcroft thanks for "letting me be myself again"), and occasionally plays as support at Oasis and Coldplay concerts, including the European and second UK legs of Coldplay's "Twisted Logic Tour". He recently described himself as "the best support act you'll ever see". The Oasis track "Cast No Shadow" is dedicated to him. Chris Martin introduced him as "the best singer in the world" when he performed "Bitter Sweet Symphony" (which Martin called "the best song in the world") with Coldplay at the London Live 8 concert in 2005. On his second album Human Conditions The Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson guest stars on the song "Nature is the Law".
Catfish and the Bottlemen
 British indie rock outfit Catfish and the Bottlemen formed in 2007 in Llandudno, Wales, with members moving to the seaside town from as far away as Sheffield and Newcastle to complete the lineup. Cheshire-born singer/songwriter Ryan Evan "Van" McCann started the band, naming it after a street busker, Catfish the Bottleman, that he saw perform while traveling with his parents in Australia as a child. Initally, the group featured guitarist Bill Bibby, bassist Benji Blakeway and drummer Jon Barr. By 2010, Barr had left the group, replaced by Bob Hall. Pairing a staunch D.I.Y. ethic with a gritty, garage-laced sound, the Bottlemen gigged constantly throughout 2012 and 2013 before signing to Mumford & Sons bandmember Ben Lovett's Communion Records later that year. They released three singles on Communion before moving to Universal in 2014. After receiving a Best Newcomer Award from the BBC, they delivered their full-length debut, The Balcony, in September 2014. The album debuted at number ten on the U.K. charts, yielding the hit single "Kathleen." Continuing to manage their heavy tour schedule, Catfish and the Bottlemen also spent part of 2015 in Los Angeles working on their follow-up album. In 2016, still riding the success of The Balcony, they took home a BRIT Award for British Breakthrough Act. Also that year, they returned with their sophomore album, The Ride, featuring the single, "Soundcheck."
Seafret
After a chance encounter at an open mike night just outside of their hometown of Bridlington, East Yorkshire, U.K. in 2011, the sweeping folk duo known as Seafret was born. Guitarist Harry Draper and vocalist Jack Sedman were impressed with each other's performances, and quickly decided to work together as musicians.They lived close to the coast, and the name "Seafret" referenced both the mist that rolls in from the North Sea during the summer, and a pun on a guitar fretboard. In 2014, after gaining some traction online, the duo made the move to London. Leaving their hometown instilled their songwriting with a greater sense of loss, both of the coastline they had grown up with and their respective loved ones. In September of the same year they released their debut EP, Give Me Something, via Sweet Jane Recordings. They spent over two years writing music together prior to relocating to London; such a wealth of material allowed them to quickly follow their debut with a second EP at the start of 2015, the aptly titled Oceans. They spent the majority of 2015 touring, including a string of coffee shop appearances where they performed with just an acoustic guitar. All the while they were composing the tracks that would form their debut album, Tell Me It's Real, which saw release in early 2016 via Columbia Records.
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