The Connecticut Tennis Center in New Haven becomes the Westville Music Bowl on Wednesday.
The Connecticut Tennis Center in New Haven transforms into the Westville Music Bowl on April 28, 2021.
The front of Westville Music Bowl forty-five Yale Ave. in New Haven, pictured Thursday, June 3, 2021.
Last day of the Annual Vibration Meeting on Sunday, August 2, 2015.
Scenes from the fourth day of the Gathering of the Vibes Music Festival at Seaside Park in Bridgeport on Sunday, August 2, 2015.
Connecticut’s improv band scene is experiencing a renaissance.
From rising stars on the traveling circuit like Eggy and Goose, to an imagined Connecticut music festival with “indie/Vibes artists” in 2022, the improv band scene is colorful as the new year approaches.
Even in a year in which exhibition cancellations and COVID conversion restrictions are creating uncertainty for the concert industry, a Connecticut concert runner has done the impossible: open and operate a sold-out season of the pandemic.
After two years of planning, the Westville Music Bowl opened in April at the former Connecticut Tennis Center in New Haven. “The Bowl,” as the place affectionately calls it, is operated through Manic Presents, which also operates on New Haven’s College Street. Music Hall and Hamden’s Space Ballroom.
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The concert runner hosted a wide variety of acts in its first season, which ended in September with a headliner with reggae artists Dirty Heads and Sublime with Rome.
However, the main clientele of the hall was enthusiastic about jam bands, who flocked to the venue to see artists such as Trey Anastasio Band, The Disco Biscuits, Billy Strings and Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, who performed at the venue as part of a nine-performance show. residence. .
Of the 40 exhibitions held at the venue in its inaugural season, more than 25 were thought to be improv bands.
Popularized through bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish, jam bands pride themselves on combining musical genres like rock and funk, with an emphasis on improvisation.
The Bowl sold out about 100,000 tickets in its first season with about 12 Array sold out according to Dave Niedbalski, the founder of Lovely Day Presents, who booked for the venue.
“We opened the Westville Music Bowl as a global pandemic, held 40 shows, won national awards from artists and enthusiasts and is now being talked about as one of the most productive outdoor venues on the East Coast. Start the first year,” Niedbalski said. Praise is motivating to raise the bar. We all knew that this position was special, but now we have to take it to another level. “
Connecticut Magazine’s “Best of Connecticut” poll ranked the Westville Music Bowl as the state’s most productive concert racer in 2021, and a recent ticket sales report with survey prices named it the most productive outdoor stadium in the world, Fenway Park.
While improv bands made up a clever percentage of the Westville Music Bowl’s inaugural lineup, Niedbalski said other types of acts, such as indie and American bands, will look more in the future. Niedbalski added that the venue also envisions “all-day reports with multiple acts,” such as its “Daze Between” exhibit in August, in which several musicians paid tribute to the grateful legacy of Dead’s Jerry Garcia.
“Promoting jam and proposing artists in all genres will be a component of Westville’s DNA, because it’s at the heart of what we do,” Niedbalski said. “New Haven is a destination for enthusiasts and not just an obstacle between New York and Boston. Those who have not yet understood it will do so very soon. “
Even for the jam bands themselves, the scene thrives in the state.
Eggy, a four-member band from Woodbridge, had a year of sold-out exhibitions and an opening concert of Pigeons Playing Ping Pong at the Westville Music Bowl in June. With its recent run of success, the organization considers its home in Nutmeg State a special place.
“For such a small state, there have also been those exclusive centers. Like Hartford, just 30 minutes from New Haven, it has a different scene, while Black Rock’s New Haven has a different scene. Everyone has cultivated their own network,” guitarist Jake Brownstein told Hearst Connecticut in July, “I leave it to the fans. There’s a strong network of other people who are dying to pay attention to this kind of music and are open-minded. “
Eggy plays at the Levitt Pavilion in Westport, Connecticut, on July 15, 2021.
The band credits the late Gathering of the Vibes festival in Bridgeport for fostering the network of jam bands in Connecticut.
“It opened the door for us to do our own things,” said keyboardist Eggy Dani Battat.
Despite the popularity of the jam band festival, which hosted Widespread Panic, Primus and members of the Grateful Dead, it closed after their 2015 festival, as the festival’s owners owed $500,000 in unpaid reimbursement to Bridgeport City Police.
Six years after the end of Gathering of the Vibes, hartford Healthcare Amphitheatre developer has announced plans for two new festivals at Seaside Park in 2022 that will be produced through concert promoter Live Nation and Founders Entertainment, which produces New York’s Governor’s Ball.
Saffan, the developer of the amphitheater, said one of the festivals will feature independent musicians and “vibes,” while the other festival will feature “contemporary” artists.
Festival organizers said they would be related to Gathering of the Vibes when describing the new festivals, which would take place on the 3rd and 4th weekend of September.
Specifically, festival organizers and city council members acknowledged that camping and nightlife activities at Gathering of the Vibes were a problem, described as “ugly as hell, noisy [and] dangerous. “
Although the artists from “Vibes” were discussed for one of the festivals, Tom Russell of Founders Entertainment reiterated that the new festivals would feature an “absolutely different show, an absolutely different [and] absolutely different atmosphere, for lack of a broader term. “
Despite Gathering of the Vibes’ complaint, Russell told reporters last month that his reporting at the defunct jam band festival encouraged him to launch Founders Entertainment and, in the end, launch Governor’s Ball.
With less than a year to go until the launch of the new festivals, the question remains whether the inspiration for Gathering of the Vibes and the jam bands will shine again at Seaside Park. same as?