AEG Live Snags SunFest

AEG Live’s Florida outpost will book and manage technical production for SunFest 2009, West Palm Beach’s annual waterfront music and art festival, scheduled April 20 through May 3.

The festival’s contract with Fantasma Productions ended this year and AEG Live exec John Valentino told Pollstar a Request for Proposals was issued, with his company submitting the successful bid.

Valentino and his AEG Live SE staff are no strangers to SunFest, having booked the festival for many years when they were on staff at Fantasma. They left the company earlier this year and opened the AEG office when founder Jon Stoll died and his widow, Lori, sold the independent promotion company to Live Nation.

“We’re happy to have [the SunFest contract],” Valentino told Pollstar. “We’re all former Fantasma staffers who have been working on it. In addition, Jon’s son Jesse is also involved now. So we have SunFest experience and we’re happy to be back involved with it.”

More than 280,000 attended the five-day event in 2008, which featured acts including Fergie, Sheryl Crow, The Black Crowes, John Legend, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. Valentino said he and his staff will book artists in all genres for the 2009 bash as well.

“The corporate resources and regional veterans working on the show will take the festival to a new level,” said SunFest Executive Director Paul Jamieson. “As Florida’s largest music and arts festival, SunFest, with the help of AEG, will showcase some of the hottest musicians along West Palm Beach’s most scenic stretch of waterfront.”