NORWAY: From October 26 – 28, Insomnia Festival and its symposium programme Movement + New Ideas will host We are Europe members for the second time. This year, the Norwegian festival will invite Lyon-based Nuits Sonores and the Austrian event Elevate to curate performances, panels and screenings. As part of the proceedings, Elevate will stage UK Drum’n’Bass artist Loxy, Dubstep pioneer Mala, Austrian dub musician Opcion, and Zsamm – a collaboration between Slovenian musician Maja Osojnik and Austrian drummer Patrick Wirzwallner. In the meantime, Nuits sonores – the French festival dedicated to independent and digital cultures – has chosen to…
Author: Festival Insights
HUNGARY: The Volt and Balaton Sound festivals are part of a series of major festivals in Hungary, held over the summer. Both have been serviced for a number of years by Capital Sound, and all continue to feature Martin Audio’s premium loudspeaker systems on main stages. Volt Festival is a massive multi-genre event set in Sopron over five days, with over 100,000 music lovers attending the celebrations year on year. Known for attracting diverse and talented headliners over 25 years, its huge popularity has resulted in a massive European following. This year saw Linkin Park, Martin Garrix, Imagine Dragons, Ellie…
UK: AIF has announced the core programme and more speakers for this year’s Festival Congress, along side a new venue for day one of the conference. Extending the ‘Pseudoscience’ theme of this year, the first day of the conference will take place within the National Museum Cardiff, with the second day at the Wales Millennium Centre (WMC) featuring a packed day of smaller scale panels and workshops entitled ‘Festivals Under the Microscope’. The first day of the conference will see a headline panel discussion on AIF’s ‘Safer Spaces’ campaign featuring Kate Lloyd (Features Editor, Time Out), Rebecca Hitchen (Rape Crisis…
NETHERLANDS: The international non-profit organisation, A Greener Festival (AGF), has teamed up with ADE Green to bring its training to Amsterdam this October for the first time. The training will run for two days at the Nachtlab, and is open to anyone with an interest in developing their understanding of Sustainable Event Management or becoming assessors of live events on behalf of AGF. Since its inception in 2007 AGF has assessed over 400 festivals for its Greener Festival Award scheme across five continents, and this year launched the Greener Event Award scheme to include all types of events. The aim…
Simon Carpenter has been business development manager at Gigantic since October 2015, with almost 10 years’ experience in the ticketing sector. His job includes discovering new business, events and promoters to work with across the country and overseeing the marketing team to develop bespoke marketing plans on an event by event basis. He also enjoys working with independent and niche events that don’t always find it easy to get the level of support they need from a national ticket agency. He has spent the summer overseeing the access control at many festivals, including Sheffield’s Tramlines. Here he shares his thoughts…
JAPAN: Rock In Japan is one of the biggest open-air events of its kind in the country, and is held on four days over two consecutive weekends in August. Once again, crowds of more than 68,000 people assembled on each day, totalling over 272,000 people in all. Tickets sold out in advance, and many TV stations reported on how successful the event was. Martin Audio Japan has deployed its unique MLA speakers for this event for many years, and once again it covered the main Grass Stage with its equipment for the 2017 edition. While this again included the MLA…
UK: Cato Music, a Production Park company, recently celebrated its 16th birthday with a burlesque-themed party at The Mill, its large-scale production rehearsal facility in Wimbledon, south-west London. As the music industry’s only full-service tour production company, Cato has spent the last 16 years catering for the rental, rehearsal, transport and storage needs of production and tour managers and crew – more than 300 of whom gathered to wish Cato founder Glen Rowe and his team a sweet 16th. Guests included production teams and band members from across the industry including Muse, Florence and the Machine, The 1975, Duran Duran,…
USA: The ticketing and event technology company Eventbrite has completed its $200 million acquisition of Ticketfly, a premier ticketing platform focused on music venues and promoters, from Pandora. Combined, the two platforms hope to deliver ‘the market-defining solution’ for independent venues, promoters and festivals, and are expected to process more than 200 million tickets globally, generating approximately $4B in gross ticket sales this year. “The union of Eventbrite and Ticketfly changes the game for the music industry. Our respective customers will benefit immensely from access to the best of what each company brings to the table,” said Julia Hartz, CEO…
UK: GLP’s award-winning X4 Bar 20s were out in force at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, led by Andi Watson, who had already been lighting Radiohead on tour using 14 of the large X4 L as well as quantities of Bar 20s and Bar 10s. The inventory was supplied by Neg Earth. Speaking of the Bars, he said: “I love how you can make light move within these fixtures. I am looking for texture, beams and movement and the X4 Bars do that really well.” All are pixel controlled through the grandMA desk. Of the large X4 L he added: “While…
UK: The latest lighting console from British lighting and video control manufacturer Avolites was used to control the versatile lighting rig on the National Theatre’s River Stage Festival on London’s South Bank this August. A free outdoor event, the River Stage Festival runs each weekend throughout the month of August. Audiences are invited to see a wide range performances from award-winning dance and cinema to family workshops, live music and theatre. “The festival’s varied performance agenda features over 60 live events,” said Huw Llewellyn, the National Theatre’s Lighting Resources Supervisor and chief lighting designer for the River Stage. “To meet…