Industry Masterclass

UPSURGE PRESENTS a Music Management Masterclass on 17th June with artist manager, Estelle Wilkinson, who has had the most incredible career in the music business.

She started her career in management in 1992, working as assistant to Happy Mondays’ manager, Nathan McGough, moving to London in 2000 where she started working as assistant to Phil Harvey, who was managing emerging act at the time, Coldplay.

Harvey decided to take a break from managing the band. Estelle took over as manager for UK and the rest of the world alongside Dave Holmes who managed their affairs in the USA. Thrown in at the deep end, this was an incredibly busy and demanding role that saw Estelle travel the world as manager to one of the biggest bands in the world. She fulfilled this role for a further 2 album campaigns for Rush of Blood to the Head and X&Y.

Estelle was persuaded to return to management duties in 2018 by Dan Smith of Bastille. She now manages Dan Smith as a songwriter for all his projects and Bastille in partnership with Eleven Management. In 2021, Bastille hit the no 1 spot in the UK with their critically acclaimed fourth album, Give Me The Future. Since then, Bastille have released an MTV unplugged live album, toured extensively in Europe, UK and USA in support of the 10 year anniversary release, Bad Blood X. Dan Smith was also involved in the writing of the score for Planet Earth III with Hans Zimmer.

This masterclass promises to be informative and insightful and Estelle will be sharing her thoughts on music management today as well as some of the notable moments from across her career.