B’Estfest Takes A Rest

Romania’s B’Estfest won’t happen this year and there’s a danger that it won’t return to the European festival calendar.

What would have been in 2014.

Festival director Guido Janssens told Pollstar the decision, which was made March 6, was because it hadn’t been possible to find headline acts that would do well in the market.

Talent buyer Dragos Chiscoci from Emag!c said he was bitterly disappointed but it has been impossible to find the right acts at the right price.

Emag!c produces the Bucharest festival with Leon Ramakers, former head of Live Nation in The Netherlands.

Janssens also said it may be time to replace B’Estfest with a new event that might do more to capture the imagination of Romanian music lovers.

Although it had two successful years in 2012 and 2013, a lack of suitable headliners and an economic squeeze that caused sponsors to draw in their horns led to B’Estfest also taking a break in 2010.

This year the 8-year-old outdoor fest, which was scheduled for July 31 to Aug. 2, was to happen on a new site in the gardens of the Mogosoaia Palace.

It would have been the event’s second change of site.

B’estfest, or B’estival as it was originally called, began in 2007 on the 30,000-capacity Romexpo site near the centre of the Romanian capital. In 2011 it shifted to a greenfield site on the edge of Lake Pasarea, on the northern outskirts of the Romanian capital.