Radio 1 Big Weekend Clean up

Students can earn themselves a ticket to Radio 1's Big Weekend music festival in Gwynedd by helping clean up a beach.

This year's free event takes place at the Faenol estate on 22-23 May, with stars including Cheryl Cole and Dizzee Rascal.

Applications are expected to heavily outnumber the 40,000 tickets available but 50 are offered to Bangor University students who clean a beach on 17 May.

BBC Radio 1 DJs will drop in to see how the beach clean-up is progressing.

Radio 1 deputy controller Ben Cooper said: ''We're pleased to add volunteering to the programme of events around Radio 1's Big Weekend.

"For Radio 1 and the listeners to be able to give something back to the area that is hosting the Big Weekend is fantastic."

We heavily encourage volunteering to our students as a way for them to gain valuable employability skills...
Becky Ryan, Bangor University

The students, who will need to register their interest in the project by 5 May, will work with Bangor University, the Marine Conservation Society and Gwynedd Council.

Becky Ryan, work experience project manager at Bangor University, said: "The centre for careers and opportunities at Bangor University are delighted to be involved with this event.

"We heavily encourage volunteering to our students as a way for them to gain valuable employability skills, so to be involved with such a high-profile event that is not only promoting volunteering but also encouraging students to think about the environment is just brilliant."

The Marine Conservation Society said it was "vitally important" that young people were made aware of "the rising tide of litter" on beaches.

On Monday, Chris Moyles unveiled the festival line-up which features more than 30 UK and international artists who will be playing on the two main stages.

Other artists performing include Florence and the Machine, Rihanna and Alicia Keys.

There are 40,000 tickets available across the weekend. Tickets are free, but last year more than 350,000 people applied for them and demand is expected to be huge again this year.

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Bangor New Music festival

Bangor New Music festival, held under the auspices of the university's School of Music, celebrated its 10th anniversary with its most ambitious programme to date, and no concert signalled the event's energy and range better than the one given by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and featuring three firsts.

The school boasts three notable composers – Pwyll ap Siôn, Andrew Lewis and Guto Puw – and works by them made up the challenging first half. Ap Siôn's Gwales, dating from 1995, pays homage to the late William Mathias, under whose aegis music flourished at Bangor. Building on fragments quoted from Mozart's Requiem, the work depicts a journey towards the mythical island of Gwales.

In the first of the new pieces, Andrew Lewis also took us on a journey, this time in and out of consciousness. Number Nine Dream explored the first movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony through the hazy veil of the contemporary electro-acoustic sound-world, making for an absorbing aural experience.

Hologram, by Guto Puw, BBCNOW's resident composer, exists emphatically in the present, with his ascetic approach to structure balanced by a sensuous engagement with sound. It was delivered with startling clarity by the conductor Grant Llewellyn.

Wales is the spiritual home of the composer Adrian Williams, and the contemplative, questioning vein that its landscape has permitted him to articulate was reflected in his Cello Concerto, premiered here by Raphael Wallfisch. The concerto seeks to reconcile in its single long span an introverted, blues-inflected expressiveness with a freer, unselfconsciously flowing idiom. It was indicative of Williams's instinctive ability to communicate directly that this was so warmly received by the audience.

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