FKP Gets More Elbe Room

Folkert Koopmans’ FKP Scorpio has moved across Hamburg, Germany, to new and larger offices overlooking the River Elbe.

The 50 or so full-time staff are now at Grosse Elbstrasse 277-279, 22767 Hamburg, and the phone number is (+49 (0)40 853 88 888). All e-mail addresses remain the same.

Scorpio, which has or has part of more festivals than any European promoter, reports all 90,000 tickets for this year’s twinned Hurricane and Southside Festivals June 23rd and 25th have already sold out.

Koopmans said moving his Area 4 Festival to later in the year, September 1-3, will see it do better than last year’s debut.

Last year, he wasn’t able to offer a camping facility and the dates available at the Oberhausen site were too close in the calendar to Marek Lieberberg’s Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park and also to his own Hurricane-Southside Festivals.

He seems confident he has the right formula this time. He’s decided to up the event from one to three days and was likely to start naming the bill by the end of April.

FKP’s August festivals, M’era Luna, Highfield and Chiemsee Reggae are also selling well. Greenfields (June 16-18), the Swiss festival the company started last year with Dieter Boes at Koko Entertainment, has already shifted half of its 25,000 tickets.

The lineup for Greenfields, which is set in a picturesque background at Interlaken, includes Depeche Mode, Placebo, Tool, Seeed, The Cardigans, and Apocalyptica.

Apart from seven arena shows with James Blunt, FKP’s upcoming national tours include Billy Talent, Coheed and Cambria, The Kooks, and The Subways.

– John Gammon