 | The Sziget Festival (pronounced to see'-get) is one of Europe's largest music and cultural festivals, held annually in August in Budapest, Hungary. The festival takes place on Óbudai-sziget ("Old-Buda Island"), an island on the Danube, thus Sziget stands for Island. The week-long festival has grown from a relatively low-profile 1993 student event to become one of the definitive European rock festivals by the late 1990's. Around 50% of visitors come from outside Hungary, with the largest group coming from Germany. Many also come from the UK, France and The Netherlands. Attendance rates surpassed the 250,000 mark in 1997 and the 350,000 mark in 2001. The all-time peak year was 2005 with 385,000 visitors. |
| Sziget Festival is notable in that it contains acts from many different genres. 2006 saw, among others, a blues stage, a jazz tent, a world music stage, alongside the main stage with more typical popular rock acts. In 2008, Sziget Festival will be from the 12th to the 18th of August. The festival, instead of 7+1 days as in 2007, will be 5+1 days long, with a "zero day" where the audience can watch one big concert (Iron Maiden). As well as Iron Maiden (see photo), R.E.M. were also confirmed. Iron Maiden is an English heavy metal band from Leyton in the East End of London. It is one of the most successful and influential bands in the heavy metal genre, having sold over 100 million albums worldwide without significant mainstream or radio support. The band won the Ivor Novello Awards for international achievement in 2002, and were also inducted into the Hollywood Rock Walk during their tour in the United States in 2005. Recently the band played to a 30,000 strong crowd at EDD-FEST’2007 in Bangalore, India. R.E.M. is an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by Michael Stipe (lead vocals), Peter Buck (guitar), Mike Mills (bass guitar), and Bill Berry (drums and percussion). R.E.M.’s fourteenth studio album, ‘Accelerate’ was released on 1st April, 2008 in North America and a day earlier in Europe and the rest of the world. Following a ‘Working Rehearsal’ in Dublin, Ireland, in which the band road tested new material and played rare tracks from their past, work commenced in aearly 2007 with ‘Jackknife’ Lee taking up production duties. Michael Stipe has described the recording process as their fastest for 20 years. The album was preceded by the single ‘Supernatural Superserious’. The 16th of August will bring them to Sziget Festival 2008. The main stage of the festival is an out-door venue with the capacity of 50,000 people, where three international stars and one of the most well-known Hungarian bands appear every day between 4:30pm and 11 pm. The length of the festival was reduced so that the residents living in the neighbourhoods nearby would have less trouble because of the noise. The organisers plan to take further steps to reduce noise: the metal stage will be open until 23:00 only and noise filtering walls will be built near the noisiest stages. In addition to music, the festival offers a plethora of other activities including cinema, dance, theatre, tattooing, Internet access, volleyball, tennis, football, bungee jumping and a life-sized foosball. Event: Sziget Festival Date: August 12 (Tuesday) - 18 (Monday), 2008 Location: Óbudai-sziget Danube Budapest, Hungary | |
| SOURCE: Sziget Festival |
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