While the best live music is all about the artists emitting impassioned energy waves and unleashing some spontaneity in their precisely honed craft on stage, no-limits improvisation doesn’t necessarily translate to the business side of things.
Music festival organizers in B.C. now find themselves navigating the return of live outdoor events amid lingering uncertainty over a pandemic that has delivered a mix of digital, downsized or cancelled concerts.
“One thing that we’ve noticed – and I know other organizations have – is that ticket-buying has started to happen later,” said Nina Horvath, executive director of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival.
“Typically where people may have bought tickets for something two months in advance, now it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s wait till the week of the concert and then buy it depending on how things are feeling.’”
The annual festival was cancelled at the outset of the pandemic in 2020 and modified last year to offer a mix of smaller live shows and digital concerts. It’s now set to return to a mix of indoor and outdoor events from June 23 to July 3.
Horvath, who was tapped for her new role last fall, said having to organize the festival months in advance with less certainty about ticket sales has made planning “a little bit more stressful.”
“It’s show business,” said Debbi Salmonsen, artistic director of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, which returns to Jericho Beach Park July 15-17. “You never know how tickets are going to sell or whether people are going to return or not. But we’re sure hoping they will.
“I’m hopeful that at least 70 to 80 per cent of our audience will return. Obviously, it’s optimal that it would be the entire audience, but I am not sure if people will come in droves as they have in the past.”
There will be one less stage and fewer artists compared with previous years that have drawn an average of 10,000 visitors daily. Proof of vaccination – at least for now – will also be required.
After offering some digital performances last summer, Salmonsen and her team decided in early March to begin selling tickets and announced a lineup that includes performers such as The New Pornographers and Taj Mahal.
Aside from the addition of some sanitation stations, Nate Sabine of This Is Blueprint Management Ltd. said the FVDED in the Park festival should feel close to the pre-pandemic vibe of the event known for drawing rap, R&B and electronic artists.
Last year’s festival was pushed back from its usual July spot to September and was spread between the PNE Amphitheatre, Celebrities Nightclub and Fortune Sound Club (Blueprint operates the latter two venues).
FVDED will be back at Surrey’s Holland Park this year on July 8-9.
Sabine, director of business development for the company running the festival, also told BIV late last month that festival tickets were already selling quite well.
Meanwhile, the Khatsahlano Street Party is back July 9 after a two-year hiatus, offering free musical performances along West Fourth Avenue.
This year’s lineup hasn’t been released, but 2019 brought more than 40 performers to stages set up next to a mix of food and shopping stalls.
And the Vancouver Opera, best known for generating spectacles inside the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, has also taken to outdoor events.
It recently wrapped a pop-up performance at Richmond’s McArthur Glen Vancouver Designer Outlet and has “two major outdoor opportunities in the works,” according to Vancouver Opera general director Tom Wright.
He said these types of events are geared to community outreach after two years in which indoor events have been mostly limited.
“We learned that lots of people want to connect with us, but they want us to come to them. So that is something that we are putting into motion,” Wright said.
It’s not only the outdoor events counting on a sizable economic comeback this year, but also the businesses that benefit from the boost in tourism.
A 2019 economic report from non-profit Coastal Jazz & Blues Society, which organizes Vancouver’s jazz festival, pegged the economic impact of its multi-day event at $42 million. That estimate takes into account broader impacts such as food, lodging and retail. The most recent 2021 economic report did not provide such estimates, and its financial summary indicated that most revenue was generated through contributions and government support (the financial figures were not disclosed in the publicly available report).
“A lot of it [2022 financial performance] depends on what the health situation is like in the months in advance of the festival,” Horvath said. “If things are looking really good and people feel confident, then I think we might have higher-than-past audiences because folks will be excited to come back out.”
