Famous electronic artists from around the world will be coming to downtown Phoenix this Sunday, March 22, to perform at Phoenix Lights.
The Dutch artist Hardwell, who was ranked the world’s number one DJ by the 2014 Top 100 DJs Poll, will be bringing his innovative house music to Phoenix Lights along with many other skilled DJs, such as Robin Schulz, Zeds Dead, Second City and Jauz.
If the big-name artists weren’t enough to look forward to, Phoenix Lights will also consist of tons of luminous, colorful lights and displays surrounding the two stages.
It’s astounding that this larger-than-life festival will be taking place in the same low-key spot where people occasionally bring their kids, play Frisbee or walk to the post office.
The futuristic theme of the concert is based on a bizarre UFO sighting near Phoenix in 1997.
While touring Civic Space Park, Jarid Dietrich, co-founder of Phoenix Lights, saw the enormous $2.5 million public art sculpture, named Her Secret Is Patience, which stands next to the park.
“Here’s this hanging object over the city essentially and what better way to kind of have this fluorescent feel to it,” Dietrich said.
Anyone who has walked by the sculpture will tell you it looks gorgeous when it is lit up at night and, in this case, the shape could also resemble a UFO.
“If you have existing infrastructure that you can take advantage of and really accentuate how beautiful the park and the city is, that’s a great place to start,” Dietrich said.
But what’s most impressive are the detailed concepts and planning that made Phoenix Lights possible and what has made it such an artistically savvy event.
Dietrich said his organization and his partner organization, Relentless Beats, had been developing the concept for the concert for a while.
“We really stepped up and put all of our artistic minds towards the programming of the main stage. We’re working with companies from all across the world, actually,” he said.
“I’m in an email thread with about 17 different artists and organizations that have come together to program what looks to be one of the most exceptional stage productions,” Dietrich said.
He believes that this festival can help build a precedent for Phoenix to have more and more iconic festivals like Phoenix Lights in the future.
“Every major city has their parks program, there’s urban music festivals … I hope that we can start adding Phoenix Lights being one of the first staple events that gives people a reason to want to be downtown,” he said.
Dietrich said a major goal is to attract more attention to how great Phoenix is and already, this festival has gotten national recognition, he said.
Even though I love the traditional band structure of guitar, bass, drums and vocals, there are certain appealing musical elements that only a DJ can present when on stage.
Because DJs such as Hardwell have a talent for altering sounds and effects of music and combining them in new, diverse ways, it can really make people hear the music from a different perspective.
These are renowned artists who can not only craft music out of synthesized and powerful upbeat rhythms but also bring this music to life for an audience.
It’s great that downtown Phoenix is being exposed to this experimental type of music, however you want to label it.
Phoenix Lights could even open a few doors for local DJs and help integrate more electronic and dance music into the local music scene, not to mention get some recognition for lesser-known bands.
“A year, two years from now, you look back at the lineup and you look back at an artist like Jauz or an artist like Route 94 and you’re like, oh my God, I can’t believe I saw them that early. They’re blowing up right now,” Dietrich said.
“We would love to…show the world what this city has to offer,” he said.
Contact the columnist at Oren.Simchy-Gross@asu.edu.
