Sziget 2015 – Organizers: The interest to the festival is unbreakable

According to szon.hu, this year’s press conference was held in Budapest, last week at A38 ship, by Gerendai Károly; the main organizer. Last year, there were more than 400 thousands visitors and this year interest is still high. Gerendai Károly, main organizer, introduced the innovations and said that the same genres will be put in the same zones. Nowadays, star performers are not enough to attract visitors. We improve the lights, the infrastructure, the hygiene, the public lights, which will be installed in more places and the main stage will be bring forward in order to be able to host more people – said Gerendai Károly.

From this year’s performers, we can highlight Robbie Williams who will be on stage on the minus first day on 10th August; this concert will be precede by two Hungarian productions: the Nagy-Szín-Pad talent show’s (yet unknown) winner, moreover, the Irie Maffia band who performed the Sziget’s hymn this year. At the zeroth day, the selection will vary from the Gentleman & the Evolution, the Florence and the Machine and to Quimby. The next days’ main stage will host performers such as, Ellie Goulding, Avicii, Kasabian, Limp Bizkit, Foals, Marina and the Diamonds, Gogol Bordello, Maccabees and the performer of the End Show: Martin Garrix.

It has been said that the financial limit to the festival has been increased which means that this year 4, 4 billion forints will be laid into the festival; moreover, the ticket selling is better than the previous year. Just for the lights, they will spend 1 million euros (almost 300 000 million forints) and more than one thousand programs will be held at the Hajógyári Island between 10th and 17th August.

Gerendai Károly also mentioned that the Sziget festival plays an important role in the national cultural life and also in the intercultural festivals; the festival has been selected as Europe’s best big festival for the second time this year. The main organizer told that 90% of the passes are being sold abroad; the week-long festival attracts as many tourists as the Formula 1. He remarked: the last year’s decision, to held the festival a week later than the previous time had made changes in Japanese and other European festivals, too. They had also put the date of their festivals a week later.

Kardos József, the old-new program director has become part of the Sziget’s team again, after Szép Fruzsina had joined a team at a festival in Berlin. At the press conference, he highlighted that with the genre zones, the festival’s programs probably will be more popular.

‘The KúltúrZóna will be stronger: in the Fidelio stage there will be with opera, classical music and jazz. Moreover, this zone will host the theater and dance booths, the ‘vándor vurstli’, a lot of little street theaters, also the Hungarikum Falu and the dance halls which were taken the place of the afro-latin-raggae place. The zone will also be home for the museum quarter, too, where 17 institutes will be there – said Kardos József.