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There are free live music sets taking place all over Manchester city centre this week — here’s where to find them

They're part of a new music festival and conference that hits Manchester this Wednesday.

Danny Jones Danny Jones - 10th October 2023

As part of the brand-new global music conference and festival called Beyond The Music, which finally lands this Wednesday, a whole host of live music sets will be taking place in the city this week and, the best part is: they’re all free.

Looking to strike a chord with shoppers, tourists and mere passers-by with a number of pop-ups, including a live music stage in Exchange Square, the main hub at Manchester Central and several local hotels, the city-wide event is completely free to attend and is happening this Thursday and Friday.

The series of special one-off Beyond The Music performances are being brought to the general public with the help of Manchester’s Accommodation Business Improvement District (BID), and the likes of local music collective, The Untold Orchestra, who’ll be headlining the main live stage.

The line-up will celebrate Manchester as the iconic music city that it is, home not only to the likes of Oasis, The Smiths, Blossoms and Aitch, but also world-renowned professional orchestras such as The Halle and BBC Philharmonic.

manchester music nights
Big Society
free live music manchester
The Untold Orchestra
Credit: Supplied

The classical music programme will sit alongside the traditional rock and electronic music acts at the festival as the event seeks to promote Manchester’s hugely diverse music culture and heritage.

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The live music stage is being programmed by Manc orchestra, The Untold Orchestra, a full seven-piece band who are focused on changing the reputation surrounding orchestras and who they are for.

Putting on shows celebrating everyone from Nina Simone, David Bowie and to Drake and local hip-hop acts, as well as hosting creative projects with different artists and communities across Manchester, collaboration is at the centre of what they do. 

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Ahead of their busy season of winter shows, workshops and highly anticipated charity launch, The Untold Orchestra x Beyond The Music takeover highlights the original music and poetry of some of the orchestra’s members and collaborators in an afternoon demonstrating again, how much great music there is in Manchester. 

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Funmi Says
beyond the music lineup
Mali Hayes

A total of seven performances will take place on the live music stage in Exchange Square from 12 noon until 7pm on Friday, 13 October, kicking off with smaller ensembles before closing with a full band. The line-up is as follows:

  • 12pm — Indie pop trio, Big Society
  • 1pm — Solo loop cello, Polly Virr
  • 2pm — R&B duo, Mali Hayes
  • 3pm — Five spoken word poets: Esther Koch, Funmi Adeyo, Jack Coverdale & Reneé Stormz
  • 4pm — Electronic pop and soul vocalist, Ellen Beth Abdi
  • 5pm — Electronic pop and soul artist, Yemi Bolatiwa
  • 6.15pm — The Untold Orchestra playing well-known hits, featuring Jenna G and Will Jacquet

Each performance will be around 40 minutes long and, as mentioned, the Manchester Accommodation Business Improvement District has also commissioned a ‘Dawn Chorus’, where a series of intimate classical performances will be carried out in the foyers of six Manchester hotels on Thursday.

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Hotel visitors staying at the Hyatt Regency, The Midland, Moxy, Yotel, Leonardo Hotel Manchester
Central and the Kimpton Clocktower will be treated to a series of very special shows performed by students from our proud music studies institution, the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM).

Whether they know it or not, guests will be woken up by beautiful performances that will take place between 8-10am at the Hyatt Regency and Midland, and from 9-11am at all other venues. Not a bad way to start the morning.

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As for anyone who’s interested in Beyond The Music Festival proper, the brand-new music series kicks off this Wednesday (11 October) and is set to be quite the collection of shows.

Boasting over 150 different up-and-coming artists from the Greater Manchester area and beyond, playing at 11 different independent venues around the city until Saturday, 14 October — we’re talking Castle Hotel, Band on the Wall, The Peer Hat and more — this new festival is going to make a splash.

You can still grab your tickets to enjoy the latest Manchester festival on top of the free live music sets down below:

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Featured Image — Supplied

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A music festival is coming to a Manchester skate park

Danny Jones Danny Jones music festival at manchester skate park 2025

With the sun starting to shine more consistently and the music festival season well and truly on its way, we’ll admit we weren’t expecting to see an event taking place on a Manchester skate park, of all places.

Projekts Skatepark, the long-standing skating hub and cultural hotspot located under Macunian Way, is set to host the fourth edition of the unapologetically named ‘Metlchester’.

Starting out life as little more than a small Oldham Street takeover, the city centre festival is returning for this year, bringing plenty of alternative music, skate vibes, bevs and more.

You can see the lineup confirmed so far down below:

The 2025 edition of the festival, a.k.a. ‘Metlchester Vol. 4’, is taking place later this month.

Projekts has been catering to local boarders for the past two decades, and along with their on-site cafe and bar, the space has been put to use for several other special events – case and point, Meltchester Festival, which first started back in 2022.

Bringing a healthy dose of garage rock, post-punk and psych music to NQ from the outset, now it’s expanded, you can expect even more variety when it comes to genre this time around, as well as a well-stocked in-house bar and street food stalls.

Oh yeah, and of course there’ll be the usual merch and skate shop for you to browse.

As for the aforementioned tunes, while last year’s festival was headlined by Night Beats and Frankie & The Witch Fingers, topping the bill this year are Snapped Ankles, along with a mix of grassroots artists, including local duo, Slap Rash, who recently featured as one of our Manc artists of the month for April.

projekts skatepark
Projekts opened back in 2004
slap rash manchester gigs
Slap Rash
Credit: Supplied

Set in collaboration with Sour Grapes Records, an equally longstanding regional promoter with hundreds of successful events to their name, they make up part of the Greater Manchester Music Commission.

Serving up an exciting springtime event full of energy, from the skate culture to the performances themselves, this is the perfect appetiser ahead of a busy summer schedule as we approach festival season.

They also happen to be the event coordinators for local music venue Big Hands, where not only are current Sicilian traders Rizzo’s are based (also set to join the festival for the day) but where this year’s after party will be held, which is free for ticket holders, by the way.

Set to kick off from 12 noon on 17 May, with a pro skater session running until 2pm before the tunage, Metlchester sounds like a belter.

You can grab your tickets HERE.

One the best in the North: Green Island celebrates fifth anniversary with biggest music festival yet
Meltchester isn’t the only festival hosted within a unique setting that we’re looking forward to seeing return this year.

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Featured Images — quantum bunny (via Flickr)/Supplied

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Scouting For Girls on Chesney Hawkes, Manchester gigs, Old Trafford and new tour

Thomas Melia Thomas Melia

In case you missed it, British boyband and pop-rockers Scouting For Girls have announced a 20-date UK tour for early next year.

They’re already planning potential set lists for the tour already including some very special surprises as well as an entire brand new album.

Lead vocalist Roy Stride reminisces on life in a boyband, career highlights and just how excited he is to play Manchester once again.

After playing at Manchester Cathedral earlier this year, the boys are coming back to one of Manchester’s city centre music venues for a 15-year anniversary tour for their sophomore LP, Everybody Wants To Be On TV.

@scoutingforgirls

Manchester Cathedral ❤️🙌🥰

♬ She’s So Lovely – Scouting For Girls

Scouting For Girls Interview

With the announcement of a new tour, can we expect any new music to coincide with this?

 We have announced a new album that will come out after our tour. This tour is all about celebrating the second album, we’re going to slip in maybe one or two new songs into the setlist as we go, though.

How excited are you to be coming back to Manchester after the reception of your cathedral gig earlier this year?

 That Manchester Cathedral gig was like it, I was gonna say biblical, but it really, it really, like, it was an amazing place to play it and it, it was unlike any gig we’d done before. Audience participation and people singing along works so well in a cathedral.

It really was a great feeling.

Are there any songs that you’ve put out on Everybody Wants To Be On TV that have grown on you over time or become your favourite all these years later?

 There’s a song on there called ‘Posh Girls’ which I still can’t believe we put on the record, but it’s so ridiculous and fun, you know, that’s probably a real favourite of mine. It’s a real live favourite too.

Scouting for Girls are heading to O2 Apollo in Manchester early next year.
Scouting for Girls are heading to O2 Apollo in Manchester early next year.
Credit: Press Shot

This time round you’re playing O2 Apollo and in the past you’ve played multiple venues in our city centre, which has been your favourite?

 Night and Day Cafe and O2 Apollo but we’ve even played old Trafford. We played in between a football or rugby game, that was pretty epic.

There’s a video which went round our band and crew WhatsApp group of the first time we played [O2 Apollo] in 2010, like when the album first came out.

We played the Royal Albert Hall the night before with these trumpet players, and they got really drunk and ended up staying on the tour bus with us. The trumpet players weren’t supposed to be there, but we hid them in the Manchester crowd and got them to play this fanfare intro.

It was really bad because they were just incredibly hung over, it was all over the place and our guitarists’ were just filming it but it’s still a real core memory for me.

It’s not just Manchester you’re stopping off at either, you’re playing a 20 date UK tour, how are you feeling ahead of playing a tour this big?

I love traveling around the country. I love being on a tour bus. I love getting a show really good. Our shows are quite fluid and they change, and the setlists change, but when you get really tight on tour it’s a magical place because you go on stage and you know, whatever happens, it’s going to be amazing.

And in fact, the weirdest stuff that happens, whether I end up in the crowd or the balcony, doing a conga – it’ll be a great night every night.

On your album you have a song titled ‘Michaela Strachan’, you all met for the first time last year at your Shepherd’s Bush show – Have you considered the potential of her joining you on stage during this song?

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Maybe. I don’t know, however, I’m quite a good friend of Chesney Hawkes, who was just in the Big Brother house, and he was supposed to play a couple of songs last tour.

He was going to pop up and play like ‘The One and Only’ at one of our shows last year and we couldn’t make it happen because our guitarist ended up having a baby early and we didn’t have enough time to do it. I think we will have to play ‘Michaela Strachan’ on tour, though.

You have a song titled ‘Elvis Ain’t Dead’ named after the rock ‘n’ roll legend, besides the Memphis icon, who are your favourite music legends?

I’ve got a holy trinity: The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The [Rolling] Stones, everything goes back to those bands for me.

I also like REM I’d love for them to get back together. They were one of the first bands I saw and when they split up I honestly mourned when they split us up, I was depressed for like two weeks. Their last album was so good.

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They’ve done a few shows now so I don’t whether they’ll get back together, but that is definitely something I would love to see.

With this tour celebrating the remarkable 15 year anniversary of Everyone Wants To Be On TV, are there any songs off this project you wish fans showed more attention to when the album initially came out?

There was a song called ‘Take A Chance’ which was the last single, I hadn’t listened to the album for many years but going back and listening to it properly there’s some really good moments on it.

You spoke on social media about your single ‘The Place We Used To Meet’ and the album of the same name being very personal to you. Did fans respond the same way they did to your first few records?

It was a slightly different record. I suppose the songs were a bit more like this inner love song in terms of being more introspective, a bit more ballady. We still had an amazing response to it and we’re really, really proud of that album. But I don’t think it had like a banger like our first records.

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If you could pick one song off The Place We Used To Meet that each of you connects to the most, what would it be and why?

Glow. It was one of the singles and it’s all about how I sort of met my wife and how we met in Tokyo, got engaged, went back to Tokyo and I proposed to her. I went and did a video [for ‘Glow’] in Tokyo too. So it’s really special.

I think we’re working out what songs we’re going to put in the festival set but I think that’s still got to be in there.

Have there been any moments in your career that have made you feel like ‘The Luckiest Boy In The World’? 

‘This Ain’t A Love Song’, because it went to number one and we got to play Christmas Top of the Pops. It was a massive thing for us – that was definitely a bucket list moment.

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We also made Pete, our drummer, wear a Santa costume and told him we were all going to dress up, then we walked out the dressing rooms and he was the only one in an outfit, so he’s just there with this whole Santa costume and beard set while we’re just dressed looking normal.

To this day, he can’t prove that he was actually on Top of the Pops because it just looks like a guy with a massive beard.

Scouting for Girls are heading out on tour to celebrate 15 years of 'Everybody Wants To Be On TV'.
Scouting for Girls are heading out on tour to celebrate 15 years of ‘Everybody Wants To Be On TV’.

Scouting for Girls are heading out on a 20-date UK tour next year including a Manchester date at O2 Apollo.

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For all the latest news, events and goings on in Greater Manchester, subscribe to The Manc newsletter HERE.

Featured Images — Publicity Pictures (supplied)

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