Blue Balls Festival

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blue Balls Festival, 2019

The Blue Balls Festival is an annually since 1992 in the Swiss city of Lucerne take-find music festival with a focus on blues , jazz , soul , funk , world , rock and pop . In addition to the concerts, the festival now also includes events in the fields of photography , art , video , film and talk .

history

Blue Balls Festival, 2016

The founders of the festival were Urs Leierer, Richard Köchli and Martin Vokinger. It started in 1992 as a one-off Lucerne lake night session on the steamship "Stadt Luzern" with a trip from Lucerne to Flüelen and back. There was a six-hour jam session with 40 Swiss musicians on the ship. Because the event was a complete success, the idea of ​​the festival came up. Until 1998 it was organized on a voluntary basis. Because the occasion was getting bigger and bigger, Urs Leierer founded the agency Blue Balls Music together with Reinhold Weber . The festival has carried out this as a multi-day festival for the organizer (Luzerner Blues Session association) since 1999.

event

The event is a mixture of free concerts and concerts with an entrance fee. The open air events in the music pavilion on the Kurplatz, in front of the Hotel Schweizerhof and in front of the KKL are free. Visitors are asked to buy a festival pin. The proceeds are used to (partially) finance the festival. The Festval Pin is also valid for the KKL Plaza and Seebar concerts, the video lounge, the live painting sessions, the photo expo, the talk show and the film screening. Likewise for the pavilion concerts, the pavilion art and for the Festival Club in the Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern. In the KKL there are numerous music events with well-known bands and musicians. The festival has around 100,000 visitors every year.

Economic basis

Only around a third of the costs are covered by ticket sales, another 26% come from restaurants and festival pins. The money that comes in through sponsorship agreements and marketing measures makes up about 29%. It was only thanks to generous donors that a deficit could be prevented; in the years 2016 to 2019 this was around 400,000 francs. The proposed solution of the festival director Urs Leierer lies in the establishment of a foundation. Only if this succeeds can the festival continue to take place “on this scale” in the future. In September 2019, the city of Lucerne made the Lucerne Blues Session association an offer to develop sustainable future prospects together and with other partners. The planned Blue Balls Foundation is to be established on this basis.

Musicians of the festival (selection)

Numerous well-known musicians and newcomers performed at the festival. These included Jake Bugg , Macy Gray , Peter Doherty , Eels , Hurts , Tom Odell , Keb 'Mo' , KT Tunstall , James Arthur , Milky Chance , Vintage Trouble , Seal , Katie Melua , Rhonda Vincent , The Corrs , Kool Savas , Andrea Bignasca , Mando Diao , Aloe Blacc , Mimiks , Damian Lynn , Lo & Leduc , Nina Nesbitt , Ed Sheeran , Xavier Naidoo , Sons Mannheims , Joss Stone , Benjamin Clementine , Jamie Cullum , Alanis Morissette , BB King , Ben Harper , Glen Hansard , Samy Deluxe and Stephan Eicher .

Web links

Commons : Blue Balls Festival  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Blue Balls celebrates its 20th anniversary. In: Lucerne newspaper . July 19, 2012, accessed June 29, 2019 .
  2. ↑ www 20minuten ch, 20minutes, 20min.ch: Blue Balls Festival Lucerne is to be saved. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The Lucerne Blue Balls Festival is running out of money , Neue Zürcher Zeitung of June 7, 2019, accessed June 8, 2019
  4. ↑ Blue Balls will be retained by the City of Lucerne. September 27, 2019, accessed October 1, 2019 .