With arts organizations and venues going into a second year in limbo from government-mandated closures worldwide, the need to dig deep into the vaults to uncover archival material to hold over classical fans has been growing by the day.
At the same time, competition for classical music on dedicated streaming platforms has been relatively sparse. The leading players are just a handful: Arte.TV, Medici.TV, Marque TV, and Qello Concerts.
Looking to satisfy the growing demand for streamed classical music concerts at home, the subscription video on demand (SVOD) service Qwest TV, is looking to change that.
Co-founded in 2017 by music mogul Quincy Jones and Réza Ackbaraly, the goal was to make a kind of Netflix for improvised music with a particular focus on jazz, funk, soul and global music.
With the expansion of Qwest TV Classical (originally beta launched in 2020), they hope to capture the COVID livestreaming buzz with historic concert videos from dance, opera, orchestras, festivals, and recitals. Orchestra lovers will find a small but well-curated selection of concerts from the Berlin Berliner Philharmonic. You’ll also see a fair selection of operas, and some interesting historic concerts by virtuosi, including Lang Lang, Boris Berezovsky, Martha Argerich, Anner Bylsma, Frank Peter Zimmermann and others.
Considering Jones’s musical DNA, we shouldn’t be surprised the service has launched into classical music in a big way. Jones started in 1958 with music lessons under the legendary classical taskmaster Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Stravinsky, Phillip Glass and Leonard Bernstein. Jones later became one of the first African American artists to compose music for films. After countless Grammys as both a composer and a producer, his life-long love of classical music can be heard throughout his career.
Combined with its other channels, Qwest TV draws 10M+ unique monthly viewers worldwide.
You can check out Qwest TV Classical HERE.
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