By Aaron Martinez
High-energy crowds covered in neon glowing outfits packed the Sun City Music Festival to experience the loud thumping and pulsating beats of local and international DJs Sept. 3-4 at Cohen Stadium.
“It was great music festival. It was fun and we had world class Dj’s come to us,” said, Charles Liming, who was one of the first people to enter the event. “El Paso showed up to support the festival and to help bring many more like this. It was a massively successful event.”
The two-day event featured more than 30 artists with the performances starting at 6 p.m. and lasting until 2 a.m. with three stages set up around Cohen Stadium with non-stop performances on each stage throughout the night. While the official attendances numbers have yet to be released, thousands of El Pasoans turned up to take in the sights and sounds.
The opening day of the festival was highlighted by performance by Armin Van Buuren, Gabriel & Dresden and Afrojack. Armin Van Buuren closed out the night on the main stage with his performance making the crowd go wild with them jumping and dancing to his sounds throughout his set.
“My favorite performance had to be Armin Van Buren, the man is a genius,” said HYPERLINK “http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=576616262” Julio Vargas, an aspiring DJ who took the opportunity to listen and learn from some of the best DJs around the world. “Great music and great feel for the crowd. A perfect way to end the first night.”
Afrojack’s performance garnished one of the biggest crowds of the festival with the artist tapping in to material from his yet-to-be-released new album. The duo from San Francisco, Gabriel and Dresden, put on the most energetic and crowd pleasing session of the first night.
“Gabriel and Dresden were just amazing,” Liming said. “They had me dancing and jumping the whole time. The whole crowd was very in to them. It was electric.”
The second day of the festival was highlighted by performances by Crystal Castles, Paul Van Dyk and Sander Van Doorn.
“Sunday was awesome. It was a beautiful cloudy night filled with great music. Crystal Castles was one of my favorites,” said Krystal Rivera, who danced the night away. “Everyone went crazy trying to get a good spot. It was definitely energetic, I couldn’t stop dancing.”
Some of the local artists that got a chance to showcase their talents were Esteban Carrasco, Jay Hernandez, Midnight Response Saturday and Bulletproof Tiger.
“We not only got to see great internationally famous DJs, but the concert showcased some of the rising talent in our local house music scene,” said Irma Almanza, who saw Carrasco perform at both Sun City Music Festival and Minerpalooza. “So this concert was great for young artist here in El Paso.”
After the success of the Sun City Music Festival, El Pasoans are hoping this event will become a staple of the city and will encourage other big house music concerts to come to the Sun City.
“With the way we showed up to this event, I was proud to be an El Pasoan,” Liming said. “We showed we can handle festivals like this and will support them. Bring them on.”
For the first time in history, El Paso will host a large-scale music festival boasting over 30 of the world’s most famous electronic music artists on three stages this Labor Day weekend. The festival will be held at Cohen Stadium on September 3rd and 4th.
The line up is almost a who’s who of electronic music artists with the likes of Dutch producer and DJ Armin Van Buuren, who’s been voted the #1 DJ in the world 4 times in a row and has played in some of the world’s largest events including in Amsterdam where he preformed for 200,000 people. Paul Van Dyk, who is a Grammy nominated DJ and producer and was also ranked as the #1 DJ in the world twice before. Afrojack, a current in demand DJ and producer working with the artists such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, Kid Cudi, David Guetta, Black Eyed Peas, Pitbull and many more. Some of the other artists at this years Sun City Music Festival include; Chuckie, Crystal Castles, Cosmic Gate, Gabriel & Dresden, Sidney Samson, Chris Lake and more. One of the big attractions happening on Sunday will be the DayGlow Blu, a show billed as the “World’s Largest Paint Party”.
The festival also wanted to showcase El Paso’s local talent and will be giving the spotlight to; Bulletproof Tiger, Johnny Kage, DJ Rich, Alftron Blkmth, Esteban Carrasco, The DA, Jay Hernandez, DJ Panda and Astrodudes.
Promoters for the festival (SMG Events) are well known regionally for brining some of the top electronic music artists in the world to El Paso on a regular basis, selling out local venues each time. This past May SMG Events hosted the Tiesto Live event at Cohen Stadium, which drew a crowd of nearly 10,000 fans. The Sun City Music Festival hopes to ride on the coat tails of this success as promoters are expecting 10,000 – 15,000 each day. “Our focus is to bring something this massive to El Paso not just for the music lovers and to ensure the event is a success, but to entice people in other cities to come get a taste of our city and see what a great place it is to visit. There is so much culture and history in El Paso and the only way people from elsewhere will see that, is if we draw them in with things that they can’t get in their own city. Once we have them here, they won’t be able to help but fall in love with the Sun City. We expect attendees to support our local economy Labor Day weekend and come back to visit us every year.” stated Alby Bocanegra, Business and Media Relations Representative for SCMF.
As if that’s not enough SMG Events (SCMF) has aligned with The El Paso Police Foundation and will donate a portion of each ticket sold to the EPPF. “We (SCMF Organizers) appreciate and fully support our uniformed officers that are out risking their lives protecting out streets. If through this festival we can assist by donating funds that would provide a vest that could potentially save even one officer’s life then it’s worth our efforts. We’re proud of our city’s ranking as the safest city in the nation and if we can make a small impact on the officer’s quality of life that helped us earn that ranking then we are all for it.” stated Bocanegra. Another alliance is with The City of El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs Department where a percentage of ticket sales will be donated to programs geared toward bringing music and arts to the children of our community.
Tickets for SCMF can be purchased at www.groovetickets.com or locally at The Headstand and All That Music.
Visit www.suncitymusicfestival.com for more info.
Sun City Music Festival
Saturday & Sunday Cohen Stadium 9700 Gateway North Blvd. El Paso, TX 6pm – 2amEl Paso, TX, August 1, 2011: Organizers of the Sun City Music Festival have identified the El Paso Police Foundation as recipients of a generous donation of $.50 per ticket sold. With SCMF organizers modestly projecting an attendance of 10,000 to 15,000 attendees per day this could be a sizeable donation to the EPPF, which focuses on assisting our Police Department in building positive relationships within the community, improving officer proficiency and safety, and augmenting law enforcement equipment and technology in order to enhance public safety and quality of life within the City of El Paso.
“We (SCMF Organizers) appreciate and fully support our uniformed officers that are out risking their lives protecting out streets. If through this festival we can assist by donating funds that would provide a vest that could potentially save even one officer’s life then it’s worth our efforts. We’re proud of our city’s ranking as the safest city in the nation and if we can make a small impact on the officer’s quality of life that helped us earn that ranking then we are all for it.” Stated Alby Bocanegra, Business and Community Affairs Director.
The Sun City Music Festival mantra of “paying it forward” is proving to be truth. Organizers have identified another non profit organization to donate funds to and will release the information once the alliance has been solidified.
Tickets for SCMF can be purchased at www.groovetickets.com or locally at The Headstand and All That Music. Advanced discounted tickets can be purchased for a limited time at www.groovetickets.com
For more information and official festival lineup, go to www.suncitymusicfestival.com
For information about EPPF, go to http://www.elpasotexas.gov/elpasopf/
For the first time in history, El Paso will host a large scale music festival boasting over 30 of the world’s most famous electronic music artist on three stages Labor Day weekend. The dates for the massive 2 day festival are set for September 3rd and 4th and will be at Cohen Stadium in northeast El Paso. SMG events is well known around the region for putting on large scale events that draw crowds in the thousands and now for bringing a festival the likes of which has never been seen before in the southwest region. In honor of El Paso’s nickname, the event has been dubbed Sun City Music Festival. The lineup for SCMF will be released in phases every week. One of the performers that has already been announced is Armin Van Buuren, who’s been voted the #1 DJ in the world for the past 4 years by music publications and websites from all over the world. Another attraction will be the Day Glow tent, which is a touring show that boasts being the “World’s Largest Paint Party”.
Advanced tickets for SCMF will be sold at the unbelievably inexpensive price of $36 each day or $63 for both days and will be slightly higher as the date for the event gets closer. Tickets can be purchased at www.groovetickets.com or locally at The Headstand and All That Music.
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