Unit 11: Music Events Management - Two Events

Unit 11 – Music Events Management

What Makes A Successful Music Event?

Festival Event: Cambridge Folk Festival

The Cambridge Folk Festival is a festival which has been held annually since 1985, but was first showcased in 1965, and has always been held in the grounds of Cherry Heaton Hall in Cambridge, England. The festival runs from a Thursday to a Saturday, and in 2013 is being held from the 25th to the 28th of July. The festivals ethos has always been to create a family friendly and environmentally friendly event to celebrate all music falling under the category of folk music. The Festivals website describes the appeal and genre of music at the festival thusly: "The Festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. The best traditional folk artists from the UK and Ireland rub shoulders with more contemporary acts, the finest American country, blues and roots artists, acclaimed singer songwriters and even the odd pop star. Bluegrass, gospel, cajun, zydeco, jazz, world, klezmer and a ceilidh are also regular features." This helps to broaden the appeal of the festival to fans of so many genres, and creates a celebratory vibe with the inclusion of all these different genres. Often attendents to the festival and smaller artists perform in spontanious fashion on small stages around the grounds to give audience a unique and more intimate performance. This different approach to a festival works and is reflected in the speed at which the 14,000 capacity festival sells out. The festival aims to create a caring, family vibe and puts on lots of events outside the musical stages for families with young children, and also admits children aged 0 to 4 for free as an insentive to draw in entire families. The festival is also proud of being environmentally friendly and has won the 'Greener Festival Award' for the past four years running. This is one of the festivals unique selling points, and the importance of being environmentally friendly is a view shared by lots of the festival attendents and also the local residents of Cambridge who don't want a mess left after the festival. Local residents are allowed cheaper tickets to the festival as they're often likely to be loyal to the local festival. Many of the acts that play in this festival play traditional acoustic instruments without electrical power supply, so key equipment would be condenser microphones for the acoustic instruments, and dynamic microphones for naturally louder acoustic instruments like drums and percussion and vocalists. These would be fed directly to a live sound engineer, and then to the large PA system which focusses more on creating a clear and concise recreation of these acoustic instruments rather than creating incredible volume as it only has to fill the marquee and larger tent containing the larger stage. The crowd at the festival are of an older generation and are more concerned about a good sound than volume as well, so having a PA system which focusses more on the subtle qualities of sound is more important. Also they have delay towers which aim to synchronise the sound with the image of the perfomers on screens outside the marquee, so those sat outside the marquee get a good recreation of the gig from further away. The artists themselves will have to hear a monitor mix which comes threw speakers angled towards the performers on stage, which helps them play in time and as a cohearent unit, so this equipment is important and also a skilled and experienced sound engineer to give the artists the highest quality of sound balance so they give their best performance.Although many of the acts play in natural light, which in July would run until about 9 o'clock, stage lighting would be neccessary inside the tents both for safety purposes but also to aid the visual aspect of an artists performance. Although the style of music doesn't lend itself to extravigant light shows it does need lighting on the performers so the whole crowd can see them play and see all the details like their instruments and their movements which are important to a crowd at this type of event who are interested in how the performers make sound and perform. Also the stage being illuminated adds to the happy sunny vibe of this festival, so even if the weather isn't brilliant the festival still feels this way inside the tent. Any equipment requiring electricity will be powered by generators near the stage, which are backed up to ensure any faults won't bring a performance to a holt. Other things that need considering in relation to the staging and performance is a crew to build a safe stage, and roadies and technicians to set up equipment safely and a few security staff to man the front of the stage and occasionally protect artists from eager fans. The Capacity of the venue is 14,000 so the ticket venders need to make sure they don't exceed the limit of tickets they can sell, and the security and volunteer staff at the entrance and perimeter of the venue need to ensure people aren't getting into the festival without a ticket, to prevent overflow which is a safety risk. Inside the venue staffing is more relaxed than a conventional venue as the concert demographic is of people who purely want to enjoy the music, and don't want to create trouble, meaning the staffing can be more relaxed. Other features of the festival inside the event are to cater for peoples human needs like catering vans and toilet facilities and also for peoples safety, where St. John's Ambulance crew are hired to deal with health problems.
The organisers of this event also have other things to think about aside from running a successful event. Alongside the promoters they have to make sure they make a profit to pay everyone involved, including the artists, marketing costs, promoters and themselves. They could plan to break even or make a loss for publicity, but this usually applies to promoters starting out, and this festival has been run for a long time so this wouldn't be the case. This festival is slightly different from others as its promotion is taken care of by the Cambridge City Council who are proud of its heritage and the festival is financially imbursed by sponsors and partners to ensure its financial stability. Money also comes from ticket sales, but as the fanbase of this festival is so loyal the festival needs very little announcement or advertising to sell its tickets. Because of the council's backing, the festival doesn't struggle getting a license to put on their event, and they work with the council to ensure the events safety and that it conforms to standards of the disability discrimination act, and that they obey the conditions for their public liability insurance. Other forms of income are from selling advertising space to official partners and food and drink sponsors inside the event. TV and Radio broadcasting of the event on Sky Arts and Radio 2 help to present this festival to a new audience ensuring its boyancy in the future, and the music publication MOJO write about the festival in their magazine and are responsible for the artist signing tent which is an attraction to fans to meet their favourite artists and have their memorabilia and records signed.
Here's the 2011 Festival Poster showing the amount of artists playing across the weekend. It shows the diverse range of acts which get the opportunity to play at this sort of festival, and how they're distributed across stages and days to pad out the event.
 



















Venue Based Event: The Stuffing

The Stuffing is an annual event held at 3 conjoined venues in Atlanta, Georgia called Vinyl, The Loft and The Centre Stage. It's set up by the band Manchester Orchestra and features themselves, their side projects, bands they're friends with and acts signed to their label called "Favorite Gentlemen". The event is usually held in November, and is a novelty event as its the only opportunity for loyal fans to see Manchester Orchestra and their side projects in one night, and in an intimate venue. The three seperate venues differ in capacity ranging from 300 standing at Vinyl to 1050 seated and standing at the Centre Stage. The event starts at 5.15pm in the smallest venue and finishes with Manchester Orchestra at largest venue playing and hour and a half set from 10.25 to 11.55. The venue/ venues are unique as they each provide a completely different mood and intimacy to the performance depending on which one is used, for example the experience maybe completely different seeing Manchester Orchestra play in the 300 capacity Vinyl than it would in 1050 capacity semi-seated Centre Stage. The building is large, and each different stage has its own bar, lobby and seperated entrance from the other venues, so the venue would provide their own staff to provide security and work on the bar for the event. This is because they wouldn't want to risk a below par security set up organised by the artists arrangement to cause damage to their venue and their reputation. This security is included when the venue is rented, along with access to the loading bays behind the venue which allow the bands to load their equipment into the venue safely, without causing any disruption at the front if the venue, and they also have rooms at the back of the venue sealed off from the venue itself so the bands can relax there away from the fans before and after a show. The bands would have to use their own team of staff to operate the lighting rigs, and their own road crew for live sound engineering and instrument technicians, but as many of them are touring acts and are often stopping off to play this event mid tour they wouldn't have a problem organising this for the three venues and the individual acts playing. Each venue has its own house PA system which the acts would use so they don't have to pay to hire their own. The system for each venue is specifically tailored for each space to ensure the best sound, and the following link shows a page of their website with documents listing each venues equipment in great detail. Each document lists all the equipment in each venue, and shows that each venue contains all the necessary equipment to do their performance like a PA system, microphones, monitoring speakers such as wedges, side-fills and drum subs, a mixing desk and equalization equipment . These should provide all the necessary information for bands to book the venue in the confidence that their needs will be catered for and the sound they produce will be a good standard, so all they will need to be concerned about is bringing their instruments and amplifiers.
  http://www.centerstage-atlanta.com/about/
As the venues have bars this will cover any food and drink necessary for the fans, but the venue will provide food for the bands in the backstage area. Parking for fans is available all around the venue, and streets near by, but the vans containing equipment and buses for the bands would be able to park in the loading bay behind the venue. As this event is contained unlike a festival, the safety of the fans is a responsibilty of the venues security staff, so their conduct inside the venue must ensure everyone is safe. Also its the responsibilty of the venue to clearly sign post things like toilets and fire exits, so in the event of an emergency people know how to evacuate safely. This event is promoted by the label which the headlining band runs, and is also promoted by the venue itself, as its in their best interest for the event to sell out. Their aren't too many concerns about selling out this event, as fans of the band and the label would definately go to the event, and given that the act with the largest following is organising it, they will be able to do things on their terms and their fans terms and easily break even and probably make money from the event. Tickets for the event were sold online or at a box office at the venue, and Manchester Orchestra used social media to publicise the event themselves and also spread around the link to buy tickets, insuring people bought tickets and attended.