Tickets go on sale Wednesday 25 April – expect a mad rush
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The programme for the Paleo Music Festival in Nyon was published Tuesday 17 April.
Headlining the programme: Sting, The Cure, Lenny Kravitz, David Guetta, Manu Chao, Justice, Garbage, Franz Ferdinand, Stephan Eicher, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Roger Hodgson, Bloc Party, The Kills, Bon Iver, M83, H.-F. Thiéfaine, Camille, The Kooks, Groundation, Kurt Vile, Warpaint, Other Lives, Miles Kanes, OrelSan, 1995, Chinese Man.
Some 230,000 music-lovers are expected to show up for the six-day frenzy of great music that ranges from rock to folk and French and world music.
Tickets go on sale 25 April at www.paleo.ch and at a number of sales points.
The full programme, ticket information and details about the 210 concerts on six stages and the 200 stands is at paleo.ch.
Programme, status 17 April 2012 (subject to change)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Final tally for the Paleo open-air music festival in Nyon, which closed Sunday night: a record 62 mm of rain, 1,130 m3 of straw, 475 m3 of wood chips and 50 of gravel, to keep the fields dry enough for the music to go on. The result was 230,000 concert-goers and good ambience, say the festivals organizers.
Geneva Festival opens officially 4 August
The Lake Geneva area is now readying for its next set of summer music concerts, warming up in Geneva to the Geneva Festival, with daily concerts at the Jardin Anglais before the official opening 4 August.
La Roche Bluegrass festival kicks off 3 August
Schedule your music overload in early August! You’ll be spoiled for choices, with Europe’s largest bluegrass festival taking place 3-7 August, just as the Geneva Festival warms up, only 25 minutes from Geneva, in La Roche, Haute Savoie.
Paris opera star and classics world musical talents joined by orchestra in St Prex
The Saint Prex Classics Festival, a smaller, more intimate, top-quality music and dance festival, is the next main music festival after Geneva’s. It takes place over two weekends in what is often described as one of the most charming medieval villages along Lake Geneva, 16-28 August.
Internationally renowned musicians Philippe Jaroussky, Nigel Kennedy, Gautier Capuçon and Jérémie Bélingard head the list of performers at the festival this year, joined by Paris opera star dancer Aurélie Dupont. The festival will also host an orchestra for the first time, with the Camerata Armin Jordan, a chamber orchestra formed in 2008, mainly musicians from the renowned Suisse Romande Orchestra (OSR), playing under the direction of Benoit Willmann, a clarinettist with the OSR.
Tickets go quickly, since the concerts are small, with opening and closing night concerts already sold out: complete programme and reservations.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, was found dead at her Camden, London home; AP reported the story and the BBC says London Metropolitan police have confirmed that a woman was found and the cause of death is as yet “unexplained.”
The Daily Telegraph says police have confirmed it was Winehouse, and that they received an emergency call from a woman at that address, but Winehouse was declared dead when they arrived.
Winehouse, who has had a long battle to overcome drinks and drugs, began a comeback European tour in June that was to include an appearance at the Paleo Festival, running now in Nyon, near Geneva.
But after she was booed off the stage in Serbia during a concert where she mumbled and appeared to be drunk, she cancelled the tour.
Parking contingency plan in place with heavy rains forecast
French singer Zaz kicks off Paleo's main stage concerts Tuesday night (photo, ©2011 Laurent Clément)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It’s music season at the southwestern tip of Lake Geneva, with Paleo opening today, 19 July, and the Fêtes de Genève 21 July.
Paleo is welcoming its fans on the first day with cool (highs of 16C), soggy weather, but that’s unlikely to keep the crowds away: some 230,000 music fans are expected during the six-day festival. Paleo features 195 concerts on six stages and more than 200 stalls. The always popular Village du Monde features the Caribbean this year.
The festival has kept aside 1,500 tickets that will be sold every day: they are available, maximum two per person, online and at Ticket Corner.
There are no ticket sales at the festival itself.
Paleo has been encouraging festival-goers to use public transport, but the advice takes on a practical note Tuesday, with a contingency parking plan in effect due to the forecast for heavy rain. Some of the parking lots near the festival will be closed and cars will be sent to Nyon’s city centre. Extra shuttle buses are planned.
Geneva brings 60 bands to the Jardin Anglais starting Thursday
Geneva warms up to its 10-day lakefront Geneva Festival (Fêtes de Genève) that runs from 4-14 August with the preliminary part of the festival, 21 July to 3 August at the Scène des Clubs, which takes over the Jardin Anglais area. The stage is home to 60 concerts with pop, disco, rock, salsa and reggae. Artists expected include: Gérard Lenorman, The Seatsniffers, Palatimba, the Gibsons Brothers, Patchwork, Jean-Luc Lahaye, Titanic and Kamini.
The big 10-day festival, which pulls in thousands of visitors to Geneva, extends from Baby Plage to the Quai Wilson, with the fireworks in the harbour 13 August as a major attraction, but the fun includes fair rides, concerts and scores of food stalls.
The special guest for 2011 is India.
Tickets for the fireworks are still available; details on the festival web site.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Are you a gas-burning road hog who loves festivals and concerts? You might have to change your ways this summer, with environment and sustainable development the buzz words for Swiss festivals.
Montreux Jazz Festival, keeping an eye on electricity consumption (photo: Odile Meylan)
Montreux Jazz Festival, which runs to 16 July, is the first of the big summer festivals and it provides details about its environmental efforts on its web site. The MJF notes that it’s been given the Green ‘n Clean award from Yourope, which awards festivals that actively work to protect their impact on the environment.
Montreux turns on the lights, turns down the consumption
Two measures the MJF cites are its work with Alpiq to provide very low consumption lighting for Le Jardin and its work with e-covoiturage to reduce the number of cars coming to the festival.
Walk! World’s largest sports event encourages us to use our legs
The giant multicultural, multi-event Gymnaestrada, which has brought 20,000 gymnasts from around the world to Lausanne this week, said loud and clear at the outset that its sustainable charter was being given top priority. Walk to the events, as a starting point, it tells visitors.
Green festivals: a balancing act (photo, Gymnaestrada, 11 July group events)
The event increased the population of Lausanne by 20 percent overnight, creating rubbish and other problems, the organizers notes.
It details its green efforts on a web page, which at the end puts the onus on you and meet to make the charter work: “Help us to make this idea of sustainable development a reality! On a daily basis, travel sensibly, eat healthily, sort your rubbish and switch the lights off after you. From now on, you can support the WG-2011 by calculating your carbon footprint and committing to reduce it!”
Gymnaestrada runs until 16 July.
Paleo pushes festival-goers to reflect on transport
The Paleo Festival in Nyon opens 19 July and it will pull in more than 230,000 people by the time it ends 24 July. Paleo sent out a newsletter Tuesday 12 July about its efforts to push concert-goers in the right direction: greener travel.
The CFF rail company offers 20 percent off to anyone who goes by train, and online car-sharing options work for both Switzerland and France. RouteRank, newly improved, is a great way to find the best options for getting from your place to Paleo, and to find out your environmental impact in the process.
St Prex Classics, small is beautiful but also gentler on the environment
A late summer festival, the newly renamed St Prex Classics, takes another approach to the environment by keeping things manageable: 10 concerts over two weekends in intimate surroundings in the lakeside old town (Vieux Bourg) of St Prex (two are in Morges, this year only). The concert, now in its fifth year, runs from 16-28 August.
Amy Winehouse, at Paleo 23 July, in Nyon
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Amy Winehouse is Paleo’s “surprise guest”, the top billing for the July music festival in Nyon, the organization announced Mondayy 11 April.
Soul queen Winehouse, who was until recently out of the limelight for several months recovering from health problems and drug addiction, will be doing a European tour this summer.
She’ll appear Sunday 23 July at Paleo. The festival’s excitement at adding her to the billing was tangible in its press release: “Amy Winehouse: an extraordinary voice, a true charisma and powerful, emotion-laden melodies. In the company of a deliciously vintage backing group, this rare artist can be discovered live on stage this summer at the Festival!”
Tickets for Paleo go on sale Wednesday 13 April, online and in outlets listed on the festival site.
http://www.dailymotion.com/videox3jtjiRSR public radio and Couleur 3 provide podcasts and downloads of several of the concerts
Crosby Stills & Nash were among the big hits at Paleo (photo: © 2010 Paléo / Boris Soula)
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – And the bands played on! The Paleo Festival closed Sunday, yet again, on a happy note for its organizers, a sold-out event, no major crises, and generally happy concert-goers. The only damp notes were problems with parking lot closures when heavy rains fell at the end of last week, just as the five-day event reached its peak, but given the encouragement the green festival gives to using trains and buses to reach it, this might have a positive result, prompting more people to reconsider driving in 2011.
Many of the concerts are available online from RSR and Couleur 3, depending on rights negotiations with the performing artists.
Big hits for 2010 were old favourites, starting with Crosby Stills & Nash, Johnny Clegg and Iggy Pop, but the Tribune de Geneve argues that hip-hop was the real star this year, performing in every corner of the festival.
The mix of music pulled in 230,000 fans, according to Paleo.
Paleo in 2011: mark your calendars now, 19-24 July.
Paleo special trains, Geneva-Lyon cuts, Migros 2 for 1
Port Elizabeth, South Africa group Ubuhle plays Tuesday night at Paleo
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Regional trains between Geneva and Lyons are out of service from Monday 19 July to 30 July, due to French rail company SNCF repairs. Buses are replacing the train service. The buses from Geneva are behind the Cornavin station, at Place Montbrillant. Details: phone 166 (CHF.50/min) for an automatic message, and if you need to speak to an agent: 0900 300 300 (CHF 1.19/min) from Switzerland.
Paleo: 20% discounts on train tickets
The CFF is working with the Paleo music festival to cut car traffic to Nyon during the festival, which runs from 20-25 July, by offering rail tickets at a 20 percent discount. RailAway prices, if you have a half-price card: round-trip (return) in second-class, Geneva-Nyon CHF6.60, from Lausanne, CHF11.20, from Fribourg, CHF25.60.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Ticket information update:
Paleo will feature Southern African artists in 2010, a nod to football’s World Cup, inlcuding Ubuhle Be Afrika.
Paleo Festival in June in Nyon, 20-25 July
Tickets were promptly sold out Wednesday noon 21 April, the first sales day, for everything but Tuesday night! Tickets for Sunday, the hottest night, went in 15 minutes and for the other nights within two hours. Paleo’s sale pitch for the remaining night: “The Tuesday night will swing between hip-hop and rock with, on one hand, the mythical French NTM and the inventive N*E*R*D and, on the other, the bruising rock of rock’n'roll legends Iggy and the Stooges and the Frenchman Saez, incisive and engaged.”
Paleo does a great job of fighting the ticket scalping problem with the Paleo bourse, starting 5 May, where you can buy or sell tickets at a fair price. This is also where you can get tickets for the Tuesday shows. And 1,500 tickets go on sale every morning at Paleo for shows that night, so there is always a last-minute chance to get tickets.
Geneva Servette Hockey Club versus SE Bern in the finals
Thursday 22 April in Geneva
Tickets sold out within two hours Wednesday morning to Thursday’s (22 April) sixth game in the best-of-seven series, so the ticket windows won’t be open at the Vernets ice rink.
Paleo 2009
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The largest open-air music festival in Switzerland, Paleo, may go smoke free.
Smoking will be banned in certain areas during the 2010 festival, Philippe Vallat, Paleo’s executive director, told 24 Heures in an interview.
Vallat and Daniel Rossellat, head of the Paleo Music Festival, told the newspaper they must comply with canton Vaud’s ban on smoking in public areas.
2010 Paleo poster, artist: Philippe Comte
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Paleo 2010 has presented its new face to the world, and with the poster by artist Philippe Comte comes a new and much more functional website. The music festival, which in July 2009 pulled in 233,000 fans during its six days, has heavy web traffic and the new site should make life easier for the next festival’s fans.
Comte, 21, is a student at the University of Art & Design (HES-SO) in Geneva.
Click on image to view larger
Meditating in the mud - Photo, Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Natural skin defoliation? Spiritual cleansing? Or just plain dirty fun? According to one young mud bather interviewed by GenevaLunch, “It’s just mud. That’s all.”
Paleo revelers were invited to take a dip in a mud pool set up in the center of the Mangroove art installation. Mangroove, a virtual swamp of passageways constructed from lengths of mangrove limbs, is a joint project between Paleo and the Haute ecole spécialisée de Suisse occidentale (HES) (University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland).
Santigold brings Brooklyn to Paleo
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Not Fancy but Funky, Funny, and Fun. This was a summary of the Santigold show Saturday night at Paleo.
Santigold, a Brooklyn, New York native, has discovered what those other kings of kitsch from the borough, the Beastie Boys, found out 20 years ago; chutzpah is cooler than gangsta’.
Private banker by day, Hip Hop fan by night arriving at Paleo
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Amidst Paleo’s 35,000 concert goers on Friday, I met a private banker who had come straight to the festival from the Geneva airport, hoping to catch some of the Hip Hop acts.
“In fact, I was hoping to see NTM [the French rap group Nic Ta Mere] but the lead singer is still under arrest, so they are cancelled,” the Swiss banker, Damian told me.
Damian, who lived and worked in India, was upbeat when I shared with him the lineup for the evening including a Bhangra performance and South African Hip Hop.
Achanak welcomed concert-goers on Friday night with their dance-friendly mix of Bhangra and electro music.
Achanak's irresistable dance rhythms - photo, Jared Bloch
Unbridled energy with La Pulquería at Paleo 09 © Paleo Festival 2009
Paleo Festival Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The crowd at Paleo couldn’t keep up with La Pulqueria Friday 24 July. The energy level on the stage was reminiscent of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern – well, when it works – and lead singer Huracán Romántica exhorted the crowd in very passable French to dance, to DANCE. He even went into the crowd and gave people liberal shots of tequila from a bottle in an effort to get them fired up.
Paleo cup washing operation. © Paleo Festival Nyon 2009
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Last year, festival-goers to the Paleo Festival Nyon discarded 1.2 million plastic cups in six days. Drinks, hot and cold were sold in cups that ended up in the garbage, or more likely on the ground. The festival’s organizers decided that things had to change.
Enter Ecocup, a French company. For the 2009 edition of Paleo, Ecocup is supplying the festival’s 52 bars with 100,000 clean, reusable, plastic cups a day with the Paleo logo on them. When you buy a drink at Paleo this year, you pay a CHF2 deposit on the cup, returnable at any of the bars. Observant visitors will see some of the 80 workers, most of them part of the Paleo volunteer workforce, processing the cups on the way in on the left, about 100 metres before the main entrance.
GenevaLunch spoke to Ecocup’s David Arnaud Friday 24 July.
Paleo crowd arriving on Thursday evening - Photo, Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Fans enjoyed unexpectedly sunny weather Thursday evening at Paleo, in spite of intermittent showers earlier in the day. Apart from a few soggy patches at the concert sites, shows went on without a hitch, and the extra plastic sacs and rain gear packed in, went unused.
Mexican virtuosos Rodrigo and Gabriela set the tone for the evening, with a near hour-long guitar duel featuring their own material as well as covers of “Stairway to Heaven,” and “Oye Como Va.” See GL’s Paleo Photo Album
A passageway to India via Nyon - Photo Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - If your vacation itinerary doesn’t include a trip to India this year, consider a visit to the Paleo Festival. As part of its offerings, the Nyon based festival is highlighting Indian culture, music, crafts and food this year.
For your passage to India, take the train to Nyon and then the local train. Direction: St Cergue (see GL tips in ”Practical guide to Nyon’s Paleo Festival,” and see GL’s Paleo Photo Album).
The crowd arriving in Nyon on the 17:00 train on Wednesday left no doubt about the tremendous following Paleo has accrued during the past 30 years. In addition to the range of Indian musicians performing on Wednesday 23 July, an array of musical talent from pop/rock dance favorites Franz Ferdinand, to Bonaparte, billed as an “international cabaret burlesque rock show,” and Quebecois Chanteuse Pascale Picard, was on display.
Paleo crowd, 2009
What it is: The largest outdoor music festival in Switzerland, started in 1976, with over 4.3 million concert-goers since then. In 2008, the audience was 227,000 strong, and there were 146 performances on six stages.
Volunteers, all 4,062 of them, helped to make the experience a great one for all. According to a survey in 2008, 59 percent of concert-goers came from the Lake Geneva region.
Paleo Music Festival, near Nyon, Switzerland, a sea of music-lovers
Montreux, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Lake Geneva region’s musical summer is well underway, good for music-lovers, a bit less so for drivers. If you’re on the road between Geneva and Lausanne in the coming week, check the news for traffic jams around Nyon. Festival-goers are urged to use public transport, made easy for them: the CFF rail company is putting on extra trains and reducing ticket prices. The last train for Geneva leaves at 03:00 and for Lausanne-Montreux at 03:30. Shuttles and extra trains between the Nyon train station and the festival operate at 10-minute intervals.
The festival sold out, all 200,000 tickets, in two hours when sales opened in April. An additional 1,000 tickets a day go on sale online at the festival site, to discourage black market ticket sales.
GenevaLunch will be covering the festival daily, bringing you news and reviews.
Montreux closes on a happy note, offers listeners online treats
Read more…
Title: Paleo music festival
Location: Nyon, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: Every year, more than 120 concerts are staged for more than 200,000 spectators in the 84-hectare Asse site, near Nyon. See GL’s Paleo Photo Album and the rest of GenevaLunch’s coverage of the Paleo Festival.
Start Date: 21 Jul 2009
End Date: 26 Jul 2009
Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The tickets for the Paleo music festival in July were sold out in under three hours Wednesday when the doors were opened. Speedy opening day sales, with people lining up well in advance to buy them, has become standard for the popular festival, but this year the tickets were gone in record time: 200,000 tickets sold in 2.5 hours. The Tribune de Geneve today carries a story asking if the festival needs to rethink its sales approach, out of fairness, pointing out that black market sales are likely to result from such a run on tickets. Paleo’s site offers suggestions for people who would still like to attend the festival, but who haven’t managed to get tickets yet – and sme words of caution about buying tickets on ricardo.ch or craigslist and other online sites.
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Paleo has unveiled its concert lineup for the 21-26 July 2009 festival in Nyon. This isn’t a year for mega-names but the concerts feature a good mix of musical styles and names, including Placebo, The Prodigy, Francis Cabrel, Franz Ferdinand, Moby, NTM, Tracy Chapman, Amy Macdonald and Bénabar.
Daniel Rossellat
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Daniel Rossellat was narrowly elected to the town council in Nyon 28 September, bringing with him a strong environmental protection political philosophy; it is the first political office for the founder of the Paleo Festival, who is considering running for mayor.
- Paleo boss Rossellat faces voters Sunday, GenevaLunch, 26 September 2008
- Paleo boss raises a glass to local and global, GenevaLunch, 25 July 2008
Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – The founder and boss of the Paleo music festival, faces voters Sunday when he runs as an independent with backing from the Socialists and Greens, for Nyon’s town council.
Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Paleo Festival opened Tuesday night under nearly dry skies, witih a sea of tents on the ground. Local media are covering the festival (in French): Le Temps, RSR with audio podcasts, 24 Heures. GenevaLunch will be bringing you its own blog posts, from two young concert-goers.
