Rick Blaskey established The Music & Media Partnership (TMMP) in 1991. The company was the first specifically set up to link the music industry with media and commercial partners. Brand partnerships have included Coca-Cola, MasterCard, Adidas, Asda, Pepsi, Cadbury, Sony, Nestle, Haagen Dazs, Dr Martens and more.
TMMP was also the first UK company to specialise in linking music and artists into major sporting events. Rick has been Executive Producer of music for many of the world’s major international sports bodies and events. These have included FIFA World Cups, UEFA Euros, and Rugby World Cups. Rick also put together the enduring anthems of England Football and Rugby, ‘Three Lions’ and ‘Swing Low’ for The FA and RFU. He has also created the broadcast themes for ITV Sport for their coverage of World Cups, Euros, FA Cup, Formula 1 and Rugby World Cups over the last twenty-five years, as well as the Olympics for the BBC.
Rick was a pioneer in bringing classical and classical crossover to the mainstream. In 1991, his World in Union project and TV theme song was the first to take an opera singer, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, to the top of the UK singles chart – a feat not even achieved by Luciano Pavarotti.
In 1995, he put together the first of The 3 Tenors solo crossover albums with Jose Carreras’s ‘Passion’; and in 1998, Rick was the first to take the then 12-year-old Charlotte Church into the recording studio.
In 1999, Rick discovered ‘The People’s Tenor’, Russell Watson, and signed him to Universal Music as their first ever crossover artist. The first album sold over a million copies. Subsequent album sales now exceed 7 million.
More recently Rick discovered the violin virtuoso, David Garrett, who he has managed and produced for ten years. Rick launched David onto the world stage by David becoming the fastest violinist in the world, live on television. David has become one of the biggest stars in Europe, playing to audiences of up to 20,000 a night. Internationally, David plays to huge arena audiences from South America to Mexico to South East Asia.
Rick’s other artist collaborations have included Andrea Bocelli, Katherine Jenkins, Paloma Faith, Rod Stewart, Michael Ball, Dame Shirley Bassey, Bryn Terfel, Ricky Martin, Emeli Sande and Ball and Boe. Before setting up TMMP, Rick was International Vice President at both Arista Records US and EMI Europe. He worked closely with iconic legends Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, Barry Manilow and Cliff Richard.
The latest phase of TMMP sees the business pioneering into international multimedia broadcast and live platforms. These include ‘The Virtuosos’ global TV series, and two upcoming musicals, ‘SoulSisters’ and ‘Opera – The Musical!’
As a devoted Sheffield Wednesday fan, not surprisingly, Rick’s business and life philosophy is ‘the only limit to what is achievable is what is imaginable’!
Website content currently under reconstruction.
Contact
rick@tmmp.co.uk