The folks at Cochrane and Area Events Society (CAES) are always looking for innovative and interesting new ways to draw a crowd, and they aren’t making an exception for the 2013 Cochrane SummerFest.
“We want to keep the old favourites, but we’re always looking at ways to grow,” said Brooks Tower, CAES director.
New this year is the addition of a one-night electronic dance music festival, which is slated to run July 26 from 7 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Dubbed TreeZen EDM, the event will see five DJs hit the stage at Lions Rodeo Park.
“Cochrane SummerFest and Classic Bullriding tends to draw young families and the bullriding audience — you don’t see a lot of people in the teenage, young adult demographic,” said Tower. “We’ve got a good, strong buzz from people in that age group, they are excited that this type of music is coming to Cochrane.”
The evening festival is the brainchild of Greg Noseworthy, a local DJ who goes by the stage name Gregrrr. Having gotten his start playing school dances as a teenager, he now has a career that has spanned internationally, chalking up experience as a DJ in England, Russia, Mexico, United States and, of course, Canada.
“These events, they are about the music — 100 per cent about the music,” said Noseworthy, who is also a CAES board member.
“We needed something for the youth, something vibrant.”
EDM, which stands for Electronic Dance Music, encompasses a wide scope of sound: house, progressive, techno, dubstep and trap, to name a few. The EDM wave has been taking the world by storm, said Noseworthy, slowly making its way to North America.
He said he’s modeling TreeZen EDM after big EDM festivals such as the Electric Daisy Carnival, Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Fla., and — what he called his biggest inspiration — Belgium’s Tomorrowland.
“It’s the colour. It’s the sound,” he said. “It’s a way of connecting with the crowd. It’s all about how you present the music — I play with my soul fully in the sound.”
Cochranites and visitors will have a chance to catch that colour and sound in action at TreeZen EDM as DJ White Light, Gnarcolepsy, Pixel Junkeez and BA DJs hit the stage. The event will even feature a live electro performance by F.A.M., a brother-sister duo.
If all goes as planned, the music festival will attract about 1,000 attendees, said Noseworthy. Ultimately, he’d like to see TreeZen EDM blossom to reap the same kind of success as the festivals it’s modeled after, even expanding to become a multi-day festival.
“This is a great beginning for us,” he said. “This shows diversity. There’s more than horses and ranching to Cochrane. There are rock fans, country fans — there are also EDM fans.”
Tickets can be purchased in advance for $20 through cochraneevents.ca and come complete with a TreeZen EDM armband. Tickets can also be purchased at the gate — for $25 — on festival day.
