Kiwi music festivals suffering mixed fortunes

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

IT takes persistence and experience to run a major music festival, says Rhythm and Vines founding director Hamish Pinkham, especially in the regions where organisers have to pay special attention to locals’ needs.

Plans for Gisborne’s three-day R&V are going well. After a second roll-out of acts was announced last month ticket demand rocketed with early-bird tickets selling out and camp sites going fast, too.

For other festivals, however, things have not been so rosy.

In mid-October, Auckland’s Labour Day event Soulfest was cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

Then the following day news broke that the newly-launched McLaren Valley Festival – to be held in January and R&V’s closest potential competition – was reducing from three days to two and moving from rural Tauranga to Auckland.

Festival director (and former R&V staffer) Paxton Talbot said negotiations with residents in the area had failed to resolve a number of outstanding concerns.

And that was also given as the reason for the cancellation of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s planned New Year’s Eve concert at Whangamata.

On a more positive note, the new Auckland City Limits Festival (developed by the same team that managed the now-defunct Big Day Out) has secured Western Springs Park for a one-day festival on March 19.