Around this time last week, Coachella unveiled its 2016 lineup, instantly sending shockwaves across the Internet by officially confirming the reunions of both LCD Soundsystem and Guns N’ Roses.
Just a week later, and the music festival’s organizers at Goldenvoice have dropped some more headline-worthy news on a Monday night, though this time it doesn’t involve Coachella.
Instead, the Los Angeles-based events and promotions company is taking its festival game to the East Coast, where it will host Panorama from July 22nd-24th in New York City.
The three-day music festival will bring “music, art, technology and local food offerings” to Randall’s Island Park, the same location where Governor’s Ball will also be held seven weeks earlier on June 3rd-5th. It’s a bold decision on Goldenvoice’s part, knowing that the Big Apple already has one well-established summer music festival, but a petition from the organizers at Governor’s Ball wasn’t enough to block Panorama from getting off the ground.
“We look forward to bringing Panorama to New York City and introducing a new festival that showcases today’s top music acts,” Goldenvoice’s Mark Shulman said in a statement. “We’re committed to creating an event that will provide significant benefits to New York City with the level of experience and meticulous attention to detail for which Goldenvoice is known.”
Goldenvoice also said that in addition to launching Panorama this July, it plans to continue working on bringing a music festival to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens someday.
While Governor’s Ball boasts Kanye West, The Strokes and The Killers as headliners (not to mention Beck, whom Yeezy had some interesting words for after last year’s Grammys) in its sixth year this June, it’s hard to imagine it being able hold its own in the long run against a Goldenvoice-run event like Panorama.
Shulman says that “Goldenvoice has received tremendous support from the local community and elected officials,” so we’ll see if two, and potentially three, summer music festivals in the greater NYC area can co-exist over time. As we saw in Southern California last year, there may be a limit to how many music festivals are actually sustainable in one of the country’s biggest music markets, much like EDM promoter SFX experienced with One Tribe Festival.
