festivals
Page: 26
“it’s a daunting task, to follow up that lineup,” says Danny Bell. He’s referring to the bill for last year’s inaugural edition of Portola, which debuted in San Francisco with artists including The Chemical Brothers, Flume, Fatboy Slim, Kaytranada, Peggy Gou, Jamie xx, James Blake and so many more heavy-hitters that the event quickly made its case for being the strongest U.S. electronic festival lineup of the year.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The even more difficult trick would be doing it all again. “This year really put my booking skills and creativity to the test,” says Bell, the SVP Talent Buyer for Goldenvoice in San Francisco. “There were a lot of changes from the initial plan to what ended up being this year’s lineup. But that’s just the nature of booking festivals. Some years, everything falls into place. That was year one. This year, it was like every time I picked up the phone, there was another piece of news derailing the plan. But we got through it, and I’m very proud of the lineup we’ve put together.”
This weekend (Sept. 30-Oct. 1) Bell and the team are bringing Portola Festival round two to Pier 80 in San Francisco, with another hefty lineup and the credibility culled from year one, with one in-the-know agent calling the event one of the most important electronic festivals in the United States.
Night one will be headlined by Eric Prydz, performing his technical masterpiece of a show, HOLO. The Portola play was made more possible after Prydz closed out the Outdoor stage at another Goldenvoice property, Coachella, on the second night of the festival this past April, allowing the Portola team to use the same equipment and tech elements this weekend in the Bay.
“It definitely helps that we share a production team and an ethos,” Bell says of Portola and Coachella, “so [artists and their teams] know who they’re working with what they’re stepping into.”
Skillex is headlining Portola night two, flying in from a festival play in New Zealand and, through the magic of time zones, managing to play both the show in Auckland and Portola on the same day. “They just really want to make this happen,” Bell says of the producer and his team, recalling the first time he tried booking Skrillex back during Bell’s time as a student at USC.
“The first Skrill quote I got was $2,000 bucks, and I couldn’t afford it. He’s obviously a lot more than that now.”
Other lineup standouts include Jai Paul, the enigmatic artist doing his first major touring run this year. “Jai Paul’s just the s–t, man,” says Bell. “There’s a handful of these super artists that you don’t know if you’ll ever get the chance to see live or book, and it magically worked this year.”
Nelly Furtado will perform her first show in the U.S. in 16 years on Saturday, with Bell saying this pop element (lead by Charli XCX last year) is essential, in that it adds a different and overtly fun facet to a lineup largely composed of house, techno and what Bell calls “esoteric electronic music.” (He adds that when he ran the idea of booking Furtado by his fianceé, “she freaked out.”)
Portola 2022
ALIVE COVERAGE
This year, the festival site — located on an industrial shipping pier outfitted with a massive crane, warehouses and an actual giant ship — will be slightly reconfigured to prevent the sound bleed that occurred between a few spaces last year. (This reconfiguration should also help mitigate the sound that traveled across the water to Alameda last year, resulting in sound complaints from residents. Bell says San Francisco city officials worked with them on solutions to this issue and hav been altogether great to work with.)
A warehouse space used as a venue — the site of a brief crowd rush incident during Fred again..’s set last year — will be flipped so that the stage is on the opposite end of the building, in order to improve sound quality and crowd flow. (While this space featured live acts last year, this year it’s reserved exclusively for DJs.) There will also be more space for GA attendees to sit and hang out, including an expanded bar area and a a bigger food court. Like last year, Portola expects 30,000 attendees per day.
This year will also feature an art gallery of rave stickers and flyers from throughout the years that’s been curated by DJ and rave culture historian DB Burkeman. Sponsored by Spotify, the gallery is meant to function as a pseudo-highbrow place for people to check out when they need a break from the music.
“The whole thing is that I want people to be treated like grown-ups,” Bell says. “I just felt like there wasn’t a festival to fulfill the desires of a 21-plus audience who’ve been electronic music and dance fans, but who also like other genres and who are interested in an event focused for the older fan.”
Bell knows something of becoming a grown-up raver. He booked shows throughout his time at USC, and started a full-time job as a talent buyer for HARD Events the Monday after he graduated college. The EDM era was peaking, electronic music was becoming a major commercial and cultural force in the U.S., and Bell was helping propel this culture in Southern California by co-designing HARD lineups that nodded to current trends, folded in genre heroes and presented smart, boundary-pushing bills to audiences who, at that time, were often just discovering the sound and scene.
Portola is thus a festival for people who became dance music fans when Skrillex was in his spaceships-and-big-drops phase and who, 10 years later, are equally as excited to hear him play the IDM his sound has evolved into this weekend.
“There wouldn’t be a Portola if it wasn’t for EDC or HARD,” Bell says, “because those were some of the fans’ first introduction to that music in a festival environment.
“I don’t think there would have been a market for a festival like Portola 10 years ago,” he continues. “The longer they stay, the older they get, their tastes change and now a festival like this can exist.”
The post-new-year dance festival season is heating up with the lineup release for The BPM Festival 2024. Specializing in house and techno, the next iteration of the festival will feature more than 60 DJs and producers, including deep house duo Bedouin, Detroit-born DJ Holographic, French phenom HUGEL, melodic techno producer Eagles & Butterflies, duo Eli & […]
The seventh edition of Costa Rica’s Ocaso Festival will happen at the turn of the new year, Jan. 4-8, in Playa Lagarto, located in the country’s Pacific-facing Guanacaste region.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The festival announced its phase one lineup on Tuesday (Sept. 19), with tech house phenom John Summit, underground leader Seth Troxler and techno force Sama’ Abdulhadi all on the bill.
The underground house and techno focused festival will also host a flurry of other globally known dance/electronic artists including 8Kays, Adam Ten, Brina Knauss, Cassian, Deer Jade, Hannah Wants, Hunter/Game, Julya Karma, Konstantin Sibold, Mano Le Tough, Mind Against, Mita Gami, Tini Gessler, Tony Y Not and Zombies In Miami.
Previous iterations of Ocaso have hosted artists including Solomun, Dixon, Âme, Michael Bibi, Maceo Plex, Adriatique, Jamie Jones, Bob Moses and Damian Lazarus.
The phase two festival will be released in the coming months. Tickets for Ocaso 2024 are available now and start at $259.
Moving to a new location in 2024, Ocaso will take place on a 200-acre beachfront ranch, The Bohemian Lagarto, offering overnight camping and beachside glamping options as well as hotel rooms. Shuttle service from the regional airport to the festival is available.
The environmentally-focused festival is plastic free and hosts beach cleanup events during the event. Playa Lagarto is also located roughly two hours from Santa Rosa National Park, where festivalgoers can explore tropical forests, surfing, bird watching and more.
Costa Rica is a relative hotspot for New Year’s-adjacent electronic music festivals, with Envision and BPM both also happening in the country each January.
On Tuesday (Sept. 19), LA3C announced its return for year two along with music and food lineups for the three-day, all-ages festival, coming to downtown Los Angeles, Nov. 10-12.
Erykah Badu and Herbie Hancock will headline, playing intimate shows at the Orpheum Theatre and Theatre at the Ace Hotel, respectively. Flying Lotus and LA jazz legends Robert Glasper and Terrace Martin will take over the Theatre at the Ace Hotel as well, and Nick Hakim, Julie Byrne and John Carroll Kirby will take over the Palace Theatre.
Additional performers include Kamasi Washington, Marc Rebillet, Sudan Archives, Fred Armisen, Lonnie Holley, Aja Monet, Pauli the PSM, Novena Carmel, Shabazz Palaces, Yrsa Daley-Ward with The Josh Craig, Acyde, Siobhan Bell, Kilo Kish, Salami Rose Joe Louis and Def Rain, as well as pop-up performances by Feels Like Floating.
In addition to the Orpheum, Ace and Palace and surrounding lots, Los Angeles Theatre will also host performers throughout the weekend.
For more information about the festival — including more music, food and film events — visit LA3C.com. Tickets are available for purchase starting Friday (Sept. 22) at 9 a.m. PT.
Penske Media’s LA3C launched last December as a two-day festival at LA State Historic Park with performances from Maluma, Lil Baby, Snoop Dogg and Seventeen.
Penske Media Corporation is the parent company of Billboard.
This week, organizers with Playa Luna Presents announced the Dead Ahead Festival, an all-inclusive musical experience at the Moon Palace Resort in Riviera Cancún, Mexico, from Jan. 12-15, 2024, celebrating the Grateful Dead songbook with two nights of curated collaborations. Dead Ahead Festival includes Grateful Dead alumni Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart, as well as […]
Organizers behind the Electric Zoo festival on Randalls Island in New York canceled the Friday (Sept. 1) opening day because Department of Parks & Recreation officials would not issue the permits needed to stage the city’s largest EDM festival, promoters behind the event have confirmed with Billboard.
On Friday, when event organizers with Brooklyn venue company and concert promoter Avant Gardner canceled the festival’s first day, they blamed “global supply chain disruptions” in a statement, saying, “These unexpected delays have prevented us from completing the construction of the main stage in time for Day 1.” Organizers did not provide further specifics. A rep for the festival told Billboard on Tuesday (Sept. 5) that the application for the permits had been made well in advance, adding that the permit issue was resolved when the festival finally opened on Saturday.
Touring industry sources, however, say it was due to organizers’ failure to pay vendors from last year’s festival that led to a shortage of experienced concert professionals willing to work at this year’s event. Specifically, the main festival stage caused the most issues early Friday during an inspection of the site hours before the event was scheduled to open. City officials demanded the festival staff fix several safety and security issues before the festival could open. It took organizers more than 24 hours to fix the issues, leading to the festival opening two hours late on Saturday.
The problems did not stop there, though. Making matters worse, many fans did not receive their festival wristbands and tickets in the mail as promised, forcing attendees to queue up for hours to retrieve their tickets. And then on Sunday, organizers were forced to shut down access to the festival after the site reached maximum capacity. Some fans who reached the festival site after the gates were closed decided to jump fences or run through security checkpoints as a group, joining other ticket-holding fans in mad dashes past security staff. Hoping to deter fans from boarding ferries to Randalls Island, festival organizers announced on X (formerly Twitter) that the event had reached maximum capacity for “unknown reasons” and promised “everyone denied entry today will be issued a refund.”
The problems experienced at Electric Zoo mirror ongoing issues at the Avante Gardner venue. Created by owner and creative director Jürgen “Billy” Bildstein in 2017, Avante Gardner is known as a favorite for fans and acts because of its size and flexible space. To state regulators however, the 6,000-capacity venue has been the subject of ongoing legal disputes and investigations by agencies like the New York State Liquor Authority over overcrowding and drug use since 2016, according to court records. On Aug. 22, liquor authority chair and commissioner Lily Fan testified that Avant Gardner “couldn’t care less what people do in their establishment so long as they made money.”
The price tag for this year’s chaotic festival — including refund costs to fans who didn’t make it in, as well as paying Friday night performers The Chainsmokers, Excision and Kx5 their full fees — could total $25 million, according to former insiders at SFX Entertainment, which owned the festival from 2013 to 2022.
Electric Zoo was originally launched in 2009 by founders Mike Bindra and Laura De Palma and grew to be the East Coast’s biggest electronic festival, always taking place over Labor Day weekend. In June 2022, Bildstein led the purchase of Electric Zoo from LiveStyle, a holding company created in the aftermath of SFX Entertainment’s bankruptcy in 2015. Bildstein agreed to pay $15 million for the festival property, Billboard reported at the time, paying about half the money in cash and while agreeing to a convertible debt note to cover the unpaid portion of the purchase.
Avant Gardner staged the 2022 festival and racked up debt with a number of talent agencies and vendors, sources tell Billboard, leading to delays building out the festival site in 2023 that were partially to blame for the permit delays.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested the city will launch an investigation into Electric Zoo’s organizers for going beyond the festival’s approved capacity. The New York Police Department estimated event organizers oversold the festival’s 42,500-person capacity limit by 7,000 tickets on Sunday.
“It’s unfortunate that the organizers wanted to turn our city into a zoo, and we were not going to allow that to happen,” Adams said during an NYPD briefing on Tuesday. “And we will be dealing with them in the next few days based on their behavior and actions.”
The first day of the Electric Zoo Festival on New York’s Randall’s Island was abruptly canceled hours before it was set to start, organizers announced Friday (Sept. 1) on X (formerly Twitter).
In the statement, organizers cited “global supply chain issues” as the cause of the cancellation and promised to reopen Saturday. Acts scheduled to play Friday include Kx5, Galantis, The Chainsmokers, Excision and many more.
“Despite our tireless efforts and round-the-clock commitment, we have made the painful decision to cancel the first day of Electric Zoo,” organizers wrote. “This year has presented unparalleled challenges for everyone. The global supply chain disruptions have impacted industries worldwide, and, sadly, our beloved festival has not been immune. These unexpected delays have prevented us from completing the construction of the main stage in time for Day 1.”
Fans who bought tickets for Friday will receive a refund. Fans with multiday tickets “will receive credit for one of the days” to be applied to a future event. The festival will now open at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and “we look forward to uniting with all of you to celebrate life and music, and dance through the sunset with the iconic backdrop of the New York skyline, right in the heart of New York City,” organizers wrote.
“While words cannot fully express the depth of our remorse about Day 1, please know that this decision was not made lightly,” organizers wrote. “We ask for your forgiveness and understanding during this challenging time. We are profoundly sorry for all the inconvenience and disappointment this will cause.”
Dear Electric Zoo Family,It is with a broken heart that we deeply regret to inform you that, despite our tireless efforts and round-the-clock commitment, we have made the painful decision to cancel the first day of Electric Zoo.This year has presented unparalleled challenges… pic.twitter.com/m5tunuANZY— Electric Zoo Festival (@ElectricZooNY) September 1, 2023
The festival’s social media pages announced the news just after 11:30 a.m. ET Friday, hours before doors for the event were set to open at 3 p.m.
Made Events, launched by Long Island City husband-wife team Mike Bindra and Laura De Palm and creators of the long-running Electric Zoo festival, was sold to an investment group that owns the Avant Gardner nightclub and venue in Brooklyn in July 2022 for $15 million.
In 2014, Made Event was acquired by Bob Sillerman‘s electronic dance music conglomerate SFX, which filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and eventually landed in the hands of senior creditor Andrew Axelrod. SFX was rebranded as LiveStyle by former chief executive Randy Phillips, who managed the festival properties for Axelrod and led efforts to sell off SFX’s assets to new buyers. Made Event was the last U.S. festival property held by LiveStyle to be sold.
The organizers of Milwaukee’s decades-old Summerfest have dropped their trademark lawsuit against the Minnesota Twins over an upstart festival held in Minneapolis this summer under a similar name, after the team agreed to change the name.
Last month, the company behind the Milwaukee concert series accused the Twins of infringing its trademarks by launching TC Summer Fest, which kicked off July 14 with performances by Imagine Dragons and The Killers at the ball club’s Target Field in Minneapolis.
Summerfest, which launched in 1968 and calls itself “The World’s Largest Music Festival,” accused the Twins of picking the name to “piggy-back” on the success of the existing event. They pointed out that this year’s Summerfest in Milwaukee also featured a performance by Imagine Dragons.
But in a motion filed Wednesday in Wisconsin federal court, attorneys for Summerfest moved to voluntarily drop its lawsuit against the Twins. In a statement to Billboard, a spokesman for the Twins confirmed that a deal had been reached to end the case.
“The parties have reached an agreement that the Summer Fest name will not be used for the concert event in the future,” said Matt Hobson, a representative for the Twins. Lawyers for Summerfest did not return a request for comment.
Summerfest, which has featured performances by The Doors, Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston, Prince and many other legendary acts, typically draws hundreds of thousands of concertgoers. This year’s event, running over three weekends from late June to early July, drew a reported 600,000 attendees to see Imagine Dragons, Zac Brown Band, Sheryl Crow and others.
Announced in May, TC Summer Fest was billed by the Twins as “The Biggest Rock Weekend of the Year.” According to the Star Tribune, the two-night event was partially organized by local promoter Jerry Braam, who had previously spearheaded a similar festival in the area called “Twin Cities Summer Jam.”
In June, attorneys for Summerfest’s parent company (Milwaukee World Festival) sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Twins, warning the team that they believed the new name infringed trademarks. They said they were prepared to “take appropriate measures” against “a clear attempt” by the ballclub to capitalize on a “well-known brand.”
On July 13, a day before TC Summer Fest was set to star, Summerfest made good on those threats, filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against the Twins and seeking an immediate injunction. They said the name of the Minnesota event was already creating “public confusion,” citing multiple media outlets that had allegedly mixed up the two fests.
“These instances are just some of the confusion that is occurring in the marketplace, confusion that the Twins is hoping to benefit from as they launch their inaugural music festival building upon the goodwill and reputation of the ‘Summerfest’ trademarks,” the lawyers for Summerfest wrote at the time.
The dispute was hardly the first for Summerfest. The festival’s organizers say they have sent 32 cease and desist letters since April 2022 to rival events that feature “Summerfest” in their names, and that 27 have either agreed to stop or agreed to pay royalties to the Milwaukee event.
A boatload of party people will start next year off with a bang on the 2024 sailing of Friendship, the annual party cruise from Gary Richards.
Richards, who has long produced music as Destructo, has revealed the Friendship 2024 lineup on Wednesday (Aug. 16), with the bill featuring Skrillex, Bob Moses, Chris Lake, Chris Lorenzo, J. Phlip, Todd Edwards, Nina Las Vegas, Rusko, Mr Carmack and a flurry of other stars, in addition to rising artists including Mary Droppinz, NALA, QRTR and many more.
The ship will set sail from Miami on Jan. 6, 2024, cruising to Belize’s Harvest Caye, a site that will host 24 hours of shenanigans including a beachside set from Skrillex. This Harvest Caye trek will also include the first ever island iteration of Richards’ Sunrise Sermon event, which he started in downtown Los Angeles in his early rave promoting days. The boat returns to Miami on Jan. 11.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Outside of music, Activities on the boats will include stand up comedy, skateboarding and a cabaret set from Dita von Teese. Friendship 2024 happens aboard the Norwegian Joy, which can hold 3,500 passengers. While the voyage is already largely sold out, a limited numbers of cabins remain.
“I’m always trying to push the envelope of new music by keeping things interesting and exciting,” Richards tells Billboard. “We have five full days, so I wanted to represent as many parts of the globe as possible to keep it spicy. We have artists from Africa, Russia, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, England, Germany, Italy, Canada, and the good ole US of A.”
He continued, “Some fresh new highlights I’m digging right now include VTSS, Vigro Deep, Sun El Musician, Nitepunk, Raven, Mersiv, A Hundred Drums, Nala, QRTR, G-Rex, Mary Droppinz, Safety Trance, Enoo Napa, and Da Capo. And of course my BFFs as always Boys Noize, Skrillex, Chris Lake, Chris Lorenzo, Bob Moses plus, plus, plus all on a private island in Belize.”
Richards launched Friendship in 2018, with the concept echoing that of Holy Ship, the party cruise Richards launched in 2012 via HARD, the electronic festival production company he founded in 2007 and which was acquired by Live Nation in 2012. Richards departed HARD in 2017.
See the complete lineup for Friendship 2024 below.
Friendship 2023
Courtesy Photo
Northern California’s Northern Nights festival celebrated its 10-year anniversary last month with a three-day woodsy bacchanal.
From July 14-16, the festival drew attendees to a campground in Piercy, Calif., a city at the center of Northern California’s Emerald Triangle, which is the United States’ largest cannabis producing region made up of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity Counties.
In addition to music and floats on the Eel River, guests of the fest were once again able to partake in Northern Nights’ cannabis offerings. For the first time in 2023, the festival allowed for sales and consumption to take place throughout the event, instead of one cordoned off area. Northern Nights organizers say that the marked the first time this model was used at a music festival. This year the festival also debuted its own proprietary cannabis strain.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
There was, of course, music as well. This year’s headliners were Big Gigantic, G Jones, Dr. Fresch, TOKiMONSTA, Mura Masa and Netsky, with the rest of the bass, jamtronica-focused bill rounded out by artists including Coco & Breezy, Daily Bread, Mary Droppinz, Random Rab and more.
Didn’t make it? Want to relive it? Memories of it all a bit hazy? Enter the Emerald Triangle of your mind with this trinity of exclusive sets from the weekend.
Big Gigantic
Always known for delivering a heady, hyphy good time, the Colorado-based duo made their Northern Nights debut with a headlining set made up of old music; not yet released music; collabs with artists, including Aloe Blacc; tracks by artists including Knock2, Steve Aoki and John Summit; along with some good old-fashioned body pummeling dubstep.
Megan Hamilton
The Minnesota-born producer performed a funky, playful set that got progressively deeper, harder and (wonderfully) weirder over its hour-long duration.
Forester
With their music written to intentionally mimic the grandeur of nature and evoke the feeling of being in the woods, the live electronic duo was right at home at Northern Nights, where they played an emotive, kinda sexy show featuring loads of their own music and remixes of The Neighborhood, RÜFÜS DU SOL and others.